One of my favorite coins ever. These can make me drool outright. This is one of three in my stash. I will likely add more as I find these absolutely stunning. Coin legends (read right to left, or clockwise, on the coin, unlike contemporary Japanese coins which read left to right; I reversed the text below for readability): 大日本 - "dai nihon" or "Great Japan" 明治二十八年 - "may-jee nee joo hachi nen" or "Meiji Year 28" (1895) 416 = grains, 900 = purity 銀 - "gin" or "Silver" in counterstamp on reverse The line and large character on the reverse mean "one yen" and read, roughly, "ee-chee en." On contemporary Japanese coins "1 yen" looks like this: 一円 or just "1円."
Just a couple of things - the counterstamp on this example is on the left, which means that this was struck in Osaka mint. This is far more common compared to Tokyo mint which had the counterstamp on the right hand side. From memory I believe Osaka mint counterstamped twice more than Tokyo mint. On top of this, coins with such counterstamps were never meant to be circulated in Japan and were meant for overseas market only such as China, Taiwan, Hong Kong etc.
