I recently found this Japanese 1 sen and trust me, it's quite difficult to obtain in a decent condition: It's a Japanese 1 sen dated Showa 14 (1939) A normal coin of this year would be something like this: The difference is with the character four. The left stroke is slanting towards whereas a regular coin of this year has a "box" on the left side of the character "four". Do try and keep a look out for it. Maybe someone here has such examples? Japanese coins from the Second World War era are pretty interesting as there was many experiments released to the public, such as changing the planchet and trying out porcelain coins (at the near end of war) and reducing the weight of some. I don't have a full set of them which may be of some challenge.
I love Japanese coins, especially the early Shogunate era stuff. I like to study them, and read your posts about them. But they are too far out of my collecting realm and I have way too many collecting realms that I will be seriously paring off these next few months.
Type A (the irregular 4), as designated by the Japanese Numismatic Dealers Association catalog is quite rare. Mintage figures are not broken down, but the JNDA value for Type A ranges from ¥500-5000, while Type B is listed at only ¥30-300. It is one of 4 Showa era sen missing from my collection, and the other 3 are from the earliest years. Interestingly enough, Krause lists Type A and Type B, but gives no information about what the difference is!
