Manchukuo or better known as Manchuria was an area that was occupied by Japan during WWII. I found the 1943 1 fen to be unusually difficult to find. This seems true for a lot of Manchukuo coins struck in between 1941-1944 for some reason - they are getting scarcer to find by the day. Strangely enough, fiber coins are much easier to find regardless of the catalog value. I do not have a Krause catalog handy to know what the values are but JNDA (Japanese catalog) seem to greatly underrate coins struck in between 1941-44. Fiber coins on the other hand are overvalued for some reason. Not sure if anyone else collects such coins but would like to hear how difficult you find these coins to be.
None of my Japanese relatives kept anything from the war years. I have found late Tokugawa and early Meiji Ichibu and tons of stuff from the 50's on but nothing from the 40's in their homes.
These are quite common in foreign bins because they look like low cost Japanese 1 Sen WWII issues, plus they are aluminum and at times were poorly struck or became corroded. Their real market value is $.25 to $5.00 depending on condition. The fiber coin is worth more just because it is fiber. A rather unusual material for coins. Many counterfeits have been made and sold on eBay for $5.00 to $10.00 from China or Hong Kong.
jlblonde - you might want to grab whatever you can from the junk coin lot and see if you can make money out of them. There's one key date in the entire series which is the 1943 10 fen (old type). This particular coin has sold for more than 200 dollars and this was 2 years ago. I regret not buying it at that time. I'm sure it's worth probably double that now. I am not aware of the counterfeit fiber coins and would like to have one in my collection for comparison. Ripley - very nice condition for the first coin.
gx, I enjoy your threads. This is one coin that's always intrigued me. Other than whats mentioned, it contains 3 "classified" metals. http://www.worldpeacecoin.org/peace_coin_photos.htm
