What is this coin it is rather small a little smaller than a dime. I believe it is rather old. Can someone with some foriegn coin knowledge translate it for me? How much is it worth? Thanks Tom
Japan, 1 sen, Y#62, dated Showa 20 (1945), 1.3g tin-zinc (probably the worst choice of metals ever used for coinage ). The combined 1944-45 mintage of this 15mm piece was 1,629,580,000. In the Standard Catalog of World Coins the lowest grade priced is VF at 25¢, but in that corroded condition it really has no numismatic value. A sen is 1/100 of a yen, so it's face value when minted was negligible at the fixed post-war exchange rate of ¥360=$1. The vertical legend translates as "Great Japan", with the date "Showa niju nen" at the bottom, reading right to left. On the other side the horizontal line is "ichi' (one) and the character below the chrysanthemum blossom is "sen". This was the last metal sen coin ever minted. In late 1945 there was a baked clay sen, in both red and brown coloration, and beginning in 1946 the denomination was not minted.
My grandfather brought back a lot of those; when he was in the Navy he was stationed in Japan right after the war ended. Also have a lot of other banknotes and coins he brought back. Inflation after WWII made minting sen pointless, so they discontinued it... that coin is the last one they minted. After that Japan used yen only. You can see the value of the sen go down dramatically as you track what metal they were made of; first copper, then bronze, then aluminum, then tin-zinc (and even clay if you count those as coins lol). I thought I had my dates wrong when the 1945 1 sen piece I had looked older than the 1941 I had... in actuality it's just that aluminum stood up to the elements better, the tin-zinc alloy used for the last of the sen coins gets corroded very easily. The 1 yen coin which was once minted in silver is nowadays minted in aluminum. The yen was about 250 to the dollar when I was in Okinawa around 1984. Nowadays it's about 100 to the dollar.
