I haven't really looked at what Japanese coins I have in my collection. In fact, when I last worked on my website for Japanese coins, I last dated it in 2009 (!) - almost 10 years ago. A fair amount was bought when it was quite cheap back then. Would you believe it if I said I bought a cleaned silver 1 yen coin for just 20 dollars? Mind you - this was when silver was just 5 USD / ounce. I took some time to sort out what I have and see what duplicates I have. Turns out there's way more varieties than duplicates than I hoped so. The basis of how I arranged it is on a Japanese catalog (JNDA). I found the varieties to be very annoying but I'll leave it as it is for now. There's one major variety that I don't think is documented, that is 1883 1/2 sen. As this collection is somewhat large, I've split it into three sections to make it a bit earlier to load. Granted the design is quite dated - I haven't figure out what is the best way to present neatly with this amount of photos. I've included two digital albums. One is the original Dansco Japan type set album and the other is my updated version. Guess I've talked enough - this is the link http://gxseries.com/numis/japantype/japantype_modern.htm Please feel free to post your Japanese coins!
That's fantastic! I've not noticed the 1/2 sen 1883 variety before--pretty cool. How easy are they to find?
I've posted this question in another forum - it seems to be somewhat easy? I do not know which coin is more common. Here are the two examples Old type New type This should be very easy to spot - you can tell that the number of "v" scales are a lot less in the newer type. Found this by accident as I wanted to downsize what I have in my collection. Here's one year before and after 1883 1882 1884 This should be considered as a variety. There's so many absurd varieties in JNDA as such as "die grease" and "die clash" have significantly higher premium.
Totally cool! And, very surprised it's not in the JNDA as a variety as that's a pretty big difference. A lot of the years show old and new style transitions, so why is this one ignored? Maybe not 'square' vs. 'v', but the elongated vs. shorter 'v's are pretty noticeable too. I've also kind of wondered why the catalog makes the bigger deal with the clashed die error on that 50 sen (like you show on your website). Of all the errors out there, why was that one so singled out? Actual varieties sure, but why specific selected errors?
The way I see it is that it's similar to the 3 legged buffalo despite it being initially a die clash which the engraver tried to 'fix'. As of why it's a desired coin, I believe it was along the lines of rays of hope coming from the phoenix. Mind you, this was right after WWII so some people may have seen it as a charm.
