Pat, my mail man, brought me a nice little gift from australia. I bought it for about $30 shipped, and couldn't be happier. This is a 2011 cherry blossom mint set, complete with a small silver medal weighing 4.3 grams ($2.31 of silver) that shows cherry blossoms when moved in different directions. The 1, 5, and 50 yen are the lowest mintage of the series so far, with NGC citing the mintage of the 5 at 348000 while the japanese mint cites the mintage of each the 1, 5 and 50 at 456000. Either way, it is the lowest. link to ngc mintage: https://www.ngccoin.com/price-guide...-yr.101998-yr.91997-cuid-1131921-duid-1455508 link to japanese mintage: http://www.mint.go.jp/eng/coin-eng/eng_number_of_coin_production27.html For some reason, the mintage of coins from 2010-2013 of the 1, 5, and 50 have been extremely low, making them all key years. Please post pics of modern japanese coins, comments on why you think japan has produced so few of these coins, or anything relevant or irrelevant!
There is a reason why the mintage figures are so low - there's simply little demand for them! As such, some of the later year coins are almost hard to find in circulation. Put it this way, when I was in Japan in around 2010, I could still find nice red UNC 10 yen coin dated 1990! It's also more cost effective to produce higher denomination coins. That said, there has been more 10 yen coins produced compared to 50 yen. I suppose more 10 yen coin is required for change, i.e. if you need to give out 40 or 90 yen in change. This article might be of interest: https://www.stippy.com/japan-life/fate-of-the-1-yen-coin/ If you ask me what my favorite coin is, it's the 5 yen coin in the old script format.
