These are coins that I have been hunting for years and just could not get my hands on them. I finally got hold of them and here is the picture: Yes, just five coins but these are difficult to locate. First coin is a Japanese 1 sen coin dated 1881. Yeah seems common so what gives? It's actually a rather uncommon variety of the large "four"(四). In high demand and I finally got my hands on one. For an image comparsion, I have posted another 1881 1 sen - with the small "four". I'm certain it's pretty obvious. The next two aluminum coins are from the Japanese occupation in Manchuria or better known as Manchukuo / Manchoukuo (however you wish to spell it). These are essentially the key date of the entire Manchukuo series. I've been trying to locate a better image for comparsion as this is an extremely hard coin to find. While they seem to look different with the character "ten" for the year 1943, I believe they look ok to me so far - no signs of re-engraving under a loupe. (would be quite upset if they are both counterfeits or altered). Another three coin left for this particular type set and funny enough, I have not seen ANY of them despite this coin priced the highest in any catalog that I have seen. Next two on the right are from the Korean empire / protectorate or Japanese ruled era. The nickel copper coin is a rather difficult coin to find - dated 1894. While many do not know the importance of this particular year, this is one of the events that triggered nasty relationship between China and Japan. The source of the problem is a revolution by the peasants. For more information, please read here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donghak_Peasant_Revolution While mintage figures are not recorded, there must be a reason why no silver coins were minted in 1894 and coins from 1894 to 1895 are just difficult to find (with the exception of copper). Mintage only normalized back in 1895/6 and fully in operation back in 1898, only to be taken over by Japan. The last coin is a coin that took me a while to hunt down. This is a coin minted by Osaka mint, Japan. Mintage figure of this particular year is said to be less than 800,000. Bear in mind that mintage of most other copper coins are in terms of 3.5 million to 21 million. While mintage figures all sound pretty high, I suspect that a fair number were melted down and were not saved as the Koreans did not have good impression of anything related to the Japanese occupation. There's one on sale at ebay but I just can't quite agree with the price. This ended up to be a good year for me. Hope you all have a great year collecting and please feel free to show some of your hard earned catches.
What's the date on your 1/2 Jeon coin? Yeah, that 四 is big! I have an 1881 Sen coin. Gotta go check it out... Green or not, I like the coins.
Thanks Gary for the links. I'm quite confident that both of them are good. First coin weighs 1.77g and the second at 1.91g.
