I thought today we'd take a look at some of my sen coins. What's a sen? Let's take a look!

The sen (銭) was a unit of the Japanese currency system before WWII. Just like the US dollar was divided into 100 cents, the Japanese yen was divided into 100 sen. Each sen was further divided into 10 rin, but we aren't going to worry about that unit in this post.

At the time when the sen was mainly used, it was equal to about a cent. So roughly speaking, 1 pre-war sen was equal to 1 post-war yen. Yeah, that's what hyper-inflation inflation can do to a country. The value of the sen fell so low after the war that the government decided to eliminate it, which is why most of you have probably never heard of the coin unless you happen to read some old Japanese books set in a pre-war era, such as Sōseki's stories.

I haven't collected all of the sen coins, but I do have many of them.

Most of the coins originally contained silver. As the years went on the among of silver decreased, then after the war started and hyper-inflation took hold, the silver was quickly dropped and the entire coin was changed to something cheaper like brass or aluminum.

Divisions

The largest size was the 50 sen coins. These ranged from 80% silver to 72% silver. As the years went by, both the coin size and the silver content shrunk. I don't have any of the non-silver versions.

Here is the biggest size, around a US half-dollar size

and here is the smaller size, the last before they removed all the silver

Next we had:

20 sen coins. These were always 80% silver, but they tended to shrink in size as the years went by. There were only three iterations of this coin and it completely disappeared shortly after the war started.

Here is the first one. A bit larger than a US quarter

Then they made it a bit smaller than a US quarter

Next:

10 sen coins. These were either 80% or 72% silver. They stayed the same size for the entire run of the coin, but the silver content decreased. This coin did stay around until after the war, but from before the war to after it switched to other cheaper materials. All of them were about the size of a US dime.

5 and 2 sen coins, which I don't have

1 sen coins

and half sen coins

The 5,2,1, and 1/2 were copper or bronze with no silver. Most of them are available for almost nothing and have no value today, but the dragon ones are loved by collectors so they will cost you.

Most of these go for more than their silver content, so in terms of stacking, this really isn't the kind of junk silver you want to get. Some of them are especially sought by collectors and so they go for a lot. The first version of the 50, 20, and 10, for example—the ones with the dragon—goes for a lot. Other versions of the coins, however, go for much less and are closer to the melt price of silver. For example, the dragon version of the 20 sen, which has a melt value of $3.38, is hard to find below $20. But the sunburst version of the 20 sen, which has a melt value of $2.54, is much more common and can be found for about $5.

So you see, for silver stacking alone I can't recommend these. The value of them will, however, probably continue to go up with collectors due to their age, historic interest, and relative scarcity, so I think they are still worth buying if you come across one at a good price.

David LaSpina is an American photographer and translator lost in Japan, trying to capture the beauty of this country one photo at a time and searching for the perfect haiku. He blogs here and at laspina.org. Write him on Twitter or Mastodon.