Picked up this Taisho 3 (1914) 50 sen recently. These are the same size as the late Meiji 50 sen coins, and were minted from 1912-17. I have a handful of the later, smaller Taisho 50 sen (1922-26), but this is my first of the earlier type. Her it is with it's type set brethren: You can see that by late Taisho, nationalist sentiment had reached a point where there was no Western text on the coins, only Japanese characters. After the War, Arabic numerals would reappear alongside denominations in kanji. If I wanted to complete a type set (excluding patterns) of 50 sen, I still need the three earlier, larger silver Meiji types: Meiji 3-4, Meiji 4 (smaller diameter), and Meiji 6-38. The only Meiji Era 50 sen I have is year 40 (1907).
Speaking of new types, this Showa 13 (1938) 1 sen is also new to me. Not bad shape for $1. I have to snatch up Japanese (and Chinese) coins from my local dealer right away if I want them. If I pass them up they are nearly always gone next time. On the plus side, their prices are often very competitive. They made three different 1 sen types in Showa 13 (1938). I don't have the 1938 date for the lefthand type, so here's the 1937 for comparison. The bronze one in the middle is a single year type, but they minted over 100 million of them. I believe it was the last bronze 1 sen type before the wartime aluminum and ceramic ones.
I wish! Those are hard to come by. I have to use a binder and flips. For some types I'm working on a date set.
I like Japanese coins also and have tried to learn how to read Japanese writing, in particular, the coin denominations. In the beginning it can be quite confusing with the dates. I generally stick with silver coins.
Starting to read the characters can have a pretty tough learning curve. I already knew Japanese before I started collecting the coins, so I don't remember what it was like learning to read characters from scratch. I was a dual Japanese/chemistry major. For the non-silver Meiji to Showa coins, there are a lot of bargains to be found, at least where I live. A huge fraction of my collection of prewar coins were picked out of 10 cent bins. (The shop is no longer there, alas.) Here was one day's haul from about 4 years ago. Some of them were even in pretty good shape. I used to wonder if the shop owners didn't read characters well enough to pick out the older coins and sell them separately. I gradually realized that they just put a much a much higher value on their time than some of the other local coin shops. If it's not silver and didn't sell for at least a few dollars once packaged, they didn't seem to view it as worth the time to write up. Anything else, regardless of age and scarcity, went in the junk bins. Bigger stuff for 25 cents and smaller for 10 cents. A lot of stuff in the 25 cent bins wasn't even that great, like old Chuck-E-Cheese tokens and whatnot. But I've found a ton of interesting stuff in their cheap bin over the years.
