Hello Silver & Gold stackers! Another week and I have another Japanese coin for you! This one is great. Not as interesting as the samurai era Edo coin I posted last week, but still pretty cool.

Here's the coin:

I'll give some basic coin stats, then we'll look at both sides, and then I'll give some more general info!

Sound fun? Let's go!

Stats

Some basic coin stats for you:

• 26.96 g
• 38.1 mm diameter
• 2.76 mm thickness
• edge: reeded

and most importantly, it's 90% silver, so that means about 24.264 grams of silver. Woohoo silver!

Let's look at the coin a little more.

Front Side

It's the same dragon we saw on the 10 sen coin I showed here. This one is pretty worn, but it's the same one we saw before. Here you can see a better (albeit smaller) version of the dragon here on a 10 sen coin:

The text around it tells us meiji nijūhachi nen (明治二十八年), Meiji year 28, which is the Japanese way of writing 1895. The other Japanese you see is Dai Nippon (大日本) "Great Japan". On the bottom we see 416, One Yen, and 900. The 900 is just specifying the silver content. The 416 refers to the weight using grains, 416 grains equalling the weight I gave above: 26.96 grams.

Back Side

^{I just realized I shot this and the next upside down. D'oh!}

This side is also pretty worn, but it's the same laurel wreath design that we've seen on many of the sen coins I've shown you. The left branch is paulownia and the right branch chrysanthemum. The crest at the top is a chrysanthemum flower, which has long been the crest of the imperial family. Well, on this coin that crest has been worn to just a smooth circle.

But if it was new, it would look more like this:

It's a nice elegant design that they used in all the coins of this era at least once.

Below the crest is written 1 yen (一圓). If you are familiar with kanji, you'll notice this is the old form of yen. The simpler form which is more common today in Japan is 円.

^{Again, upside down...}

About

As originally conceived, the yen was equal to the dollar, making this very similar to a silver dollar. There was a (much smaller) gold yen that they tried, but they eventually settled on this silver design for parity with the dollar. It's a really nice coin. But the hyperinflation following WWII put an end to that as the value of the yen dropped far below a cent (before rising to more or less equal a cent in today's world).

You can see the coin is about the same diameter as a Morgan dollar, though it is not quite as thick.

And here it is with my Kaei Isshugin laying on top:

By the way, here it is compared to the modern (aluminum) 1 yen coin. The modern one is so light it floats on water and so worthless that most people don't bother with it. How far the ¥1 has fallen...

Overall

I really like this coin. It has a beautiful design and has a nice heft. Unfortunately collectors love this coin too so you can expect to pay close to $70-100 for it unless you happen to find either a deal or a very worn copy like I did. Even so, I paid ¥3000 (roughly $30) for this. The melt value is around $19 according to silveragecoins, so I didn't do too bad. But outside of Japan I'm not sure how much luck you will have finding a deal like I did.

Thoughts?

❦

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.