You are buying direct and saving money as a result. We ship internationally and group ship to save you money. Email cheetahdmr@aol.com with any questions. Super Value, Compare! Piece is heavy. We have a collection of rare costumes from remote places of the world. You are buying the Toraja armor shown on first 2 pictures. We also show you how to display one on the wall on the 4th photo & the additional photo added is a picture of the Toraja village where we collected the armor. We have collected these rare costumes for the last 30 years, the remaining photos are a preview of some of the pieces we have available in our store and will list upon request. We usually sell the larger pieces from our actual Florida Store since they are extremely time consuming to pack. All our handcrafted or rare collector items come with pages and pages of research depending on the item, also provenance and history of the tribes is included, with photos, whenever available. ITEM: This is a very rare warrior's battle vest from a Toraja tribe of Sulawesi, Indonesia collected in 1989 in a village of Torajaland, near Rantepao and estimated to be from the 1950's. The Toraja were considered fierce headhunters and the samurai style vest was used to provide protection in battle. The vest is composed of plates of horn and bone cut from the scapula and ribs of water buffalo which are sewn onto a fiber layer backing of thinly split hand woven rattan, it is very heavy as a result. Such protective wear remind of Samurai armors and it is true indeed that Japan has a great deal of influence in the Indonesian archipelago around the 1940’s. Note the large round hard seed pods that serve as decorative fasteners on the front of the vest. It is seldom that these sorts of armored vests come available for sale. It is a genuine tribal artifact from Torajaland and truly a collector's item. Such a piece was exhibited and catalogued in the "Warfare in the Pacific" exhibition at Hawaii's Pacific University in Hawaii in 1998. I have seen some of these armours on occasions on the internet for up to $4,000.00. They are scarce: Our prices are very low as we sell mostly wholesale and we go straight to the source to find these treasures, so you are getting the advantage of that saving as well as the advantage of the wholesale price without having to buy a lot of different artifacts at the same time. We have unique hand carved bars to hang the armors from, as a wall display, that are available in our store as well. We also have another armor in our collection, also shown here, in case you like it better, plus you can see how it looks hanging on one of our handcarved bars on the wall. Our prices are very low as we sell mostly wholesale and we go straight to the source to find these treasures, so you are getting the advantage of that saving as well as the advantage of the wholesale price without having to purchase multiples for a little while longer while we are making room. To see pictures of our collection, go to this link below and scroll down till you get to the photos, there are a few pages of pictures & text for educational purposes that we were asked to place on this site and we add more weekly whenever we find time. You will find there photos of what we collect and sell regularly and the interesting stories behind these items we search for in remote areas of the world http://tikiroom.com/tikicentral/bb/viewtopic.php?topic=14409&forum=5 and if you want to see colorful artwork to get ideas, and ways to transform houses with no flair into Carribean hideways, check this link again on the same site for fun! http://www.tikiroom.com/tikicentral/bb/viewtopic.php?topic=16503&forum=6&4