Asian coin??

I have a coin of some sort that I found outside of a casino about 5 years ago. It's a tad bit smaller than a nickle, silver, with a round hole in the center. On one side it has flowers, 3 characters , flowers, and 3 characters. On the flip side, it has 5 0 on the top and 4 characters on the bottom, with the # 3 being the third character. It's a beautiful object. I just wish I knew what it was. Can anyone help me, please? I would greatly appreciate it. Thanx.

 

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most likely Japanese, I would guess. Does the flower run around the circle, being that the hole is in the center?

 

Hang on - I think I got it....


is THIS your coin? This is a Japanese 50 Yen - this example is from 1977 The characters beneath the 50 are the date

 

There's 1 flower that runs on one side of the circle, 2 flowers that run on the other side of it and the characters run on the top and bottom of the circle. None of them run together or touch. I was on the computer forever today and could not find it.

 

yeap... sounds like it.

 

YEEAAAAA!!!!!!!!! That is so great. That's my coin. So, what exactly is a Japanese 50 yen?

 

Well, the yen is the standard denomination in Japan - and this example is the 52nd year of Showa, so on the reverse side of this coin, mine has a 52 for the 4th and 5th character - which is 1977 AD.

Do you happen to have your coin in hand right now? There should be 5 characters - the first two are designated for the dynasty, followed by the year # (42-63 for your issue) then the last is the Japanese character for "Year"...

year 42 (1967) - year 63 (1988)

 

Mine has 5 0 on the top and only 4 characters on the bottom.

 

I don't have any pictures, but do you have a pic of the other side of that coin you can show?

 

sure... hang on.

 

here it is.

 

symbol, symbol, 3, symbol. ?

 

Where that one has 5 2, mine only has a 3. What does that mean?

 

Hi Red, and welcome to the forum.

You will notice that in addition to the different number, the first two characters on the bottom of your coin are different from the ones on the posted picture. That's because the posted coin is dated Showa 52 (1977), meaning it was issued in the 52nd year of Emperor Hirohito's reign. Yours is dated Heisei 3 (1991), because it was issued in the third year of current Emperor Akihito's reign. The final character "nen", means "year".

It's copper-nickle, identified as Y#101.2 in the Standard Catalog of World Coins. Face value is approximately US46¢, and with the second highest mintage (208,900,000) of the variety, the catalog estimate of $1 for an uncirculated example is on the high side.

 

Thank you, both, so much for your help.