Dear Board, I am about to end another late night of Japanese coin research and hit the hay, but an itchy question has just popped up: How much could one buy with a 100-yen coin during the late 1970s and early 1980s? I am aware that it could have paid for a playing session on a Japanese arcade cabinet, but what else? A bus ride? A loaf of bread? I would be very interested to hear of some first or secondhand accounts before my article on the Space Invaders 100-yen coin shortage is submitted at the end of this week. Best regards and Merry Christmas! Mark Fox Michigan
No idea. I lived in Japan in 89-92, and it fluctuated. At one point it was 142 yen to the dollar, and at another almost equal to the dollar. My economics teacher lived there in the mid 80's when apparently the dollar was quite strong to the yen.
This goes a while ago when TV were pretty "scarce", probably 15 years or more. In a motel with 100 yen, you can probably enjoy 10 mins of watch time before it cuts you off. But again, with 100 yen, there are 100 yen shops floating around which you can buy a fair bit of household goods which you couldn't previously. In fact, it would be the very opposite that you couldn't buy a lot with 100 yen in the past as Japan has been in a deflation session for a period of time.
Right now, in some places in Japan, you can buy a bottle of water or cold green tea in a vending machine for ¥100, though ¥120 to ¥150 is more common. In Japan there is a 5% consumption tax on sales, so factor that into the price of things as well if you are trying to understand value. Supermarkets sell bottled drinks like water, tea and juice for ¥78, ¥98, and ¥105 pretty regularly, while convenience stores will range ¥125 - ¥147ish per bottled drink. These are all for standard 500ml plastic bottles or smaller sizes, as well as many small tetrapaks and some small metal canned beverages, like chilled coffee drinks. A tiny pack of breath mints or a small packet of chocolates (like the smallest packet of M&Ms) would also sell close to ¥100 in a convenience store. Search "consumption tax japan" and you can find documents pertaining to that topic as well. CTers Collector1966 and hontonai may well be your best source for this info. If you are in a hurry, shoot them a PM or post a comment in their visitor page. OANDA Historical Exchange Rates x-e currency conversion
Another idea for the OP to look for prices from the era in question would be to hit up some toy collector web forums. It seems a relevant category of collecting to that of Space Invaders, as many collectors of Japanese sci-fi toys and anime characters and such merchandise could probably give you a range of what toys sold for then, their old toys may have Japanese price tags labeled on them.
I used to travel to Japan frequently in the 1979 - 1985 timeframe. As I recall, I received close to 300 yen to the US dollar on my earliest trips and about half that later on. Based upon this, I would guess that 100 Yen was like 33 cents US in 1980 exchange. Certainly some items were more expensive in Japan than in the US. Items like beef were much more expensive in Japan because beef was imported. In the early 1980s, I felt that the overall cost of living was higher in Japan than the US. I didn't live in Japan. I only visited on business several times a year. In the last 20 years I have only visited Japan a few times.
I was just there a couple of weeks ago, and the rate was about 130 yen to the dollar, which the Japanese thought was too high. Krispy's description of what you can buy today is accurate.
I'm confused by your exchange rate...? $:¥ has been around ¥77:$1 range these days, [¥76-¥79 in recent months]
You can look it up easily enough but as I remember 100Y was about 40c in 1979. Most things would be similarly priced to the US but as was mentioned some things were much higher and some would be a little lower. Electronics and many manufactured goods would have been lower. Rice and fish would be much cheaper. In 1979 one could eat in the US in less expensive regions for about $2 a day without cutting too many corners. A similar diet in Japan was probably about 500Y but the same foods would be 1200Y. A person eating a lot of fish and rice could probably get by with 450Yen. The 100Y coin was the workhorse of the economy in those days similarly to the quarter in the US. Velocity of the coin was high. I doubt many were set aside judging by the cost of pristine examples in Japan today. It's likely that most of these are worn about the same but I have no experience to know this since there's no way to know when examples in this country left Japan.
Dear Board, My apologies for the long silence. I greatly appreciated the input I received! For those who might be interested, my article on the Space Invaders 100-yen coin shortage was recently published. I am not certain what the print version looks like in World Coin News, but here is the digital reprint, as shown on Numismaster.com: http://www.numismaster.com/ta/numis/Article.jsp?ad=article&ArticleId=24643 Thank you all again for taking the time to help answer my question! Best regards, Mark Fox Michigan
