I just got back from visiting my company’s sister plant in Shizuoka Prefecture and was fortunate to have some time to explore Tokyo. I couldn’t resist visiting a couple of local coin shops while I was there. One, Ginza Coins, was near the main Ginza shopping district and had a fair number of high end PCGS Japanese Imperial gold and world coins, along with a nice modern selection. Their markup seemed a bit high which would correspond with their location. The other was a more local shop tucked away on the fourth floor of a difficult to find address in Shinjuku. I had to ask around even while using Google Maps. I wasn’t in the market to spend big money and mainly was looking for souvenirs. In addition to experiencing Japanese coin shops (unfortunately with a language barrier) I ended up with some decent deals, especially considering the shipping costs when buying similar material on EBay. Both shops had a lot of reasonably priced proof sets, including this 1994 for 1500 yen which isn’t bad for over 600 yen face value. And here I paid 1500 yen for 1000 yen face for a couple 1988 commemoratives in OGP: And since I was traveling to Shizuoka I found a perfect souvenir for 2000 yen, from the “47 Prefectures” coin program: Lastly some postwar obsolete banknotes: Not a high value haul but the memories are priceless.
Fantastic! What a great trip! I look at the Ginza Coins site once in a while and I would love to visit them someday, but the markup that you mentioned doesn't really surprise me. At this point, I speak enough Japanese to "get by" and I could probably make it through a coin shop purchase, but I have yet to visit Japan. Hearing about visits such as yours makes my trip urges burgeon. Thanks for sharing! By the way, did you happen to catch any new Reiwa coins in circulation? They should have the characters "令和元年" on them.
Unfortunately not. I have a couple new looking 100 yen coins from year 30. Is that 2019/last year of Akihito? This year’s mint sets were going for 3500 yen which I thought was steep for circulating coins, so I really couldn’t justify the purchase. Not sure if they were Reiwa. Ginza also had a lot of cheap pre Meiji coins. I’m not into those but if I was it would have been a good place to buy attributed coins that I could be sure are genuine.
I should also share this recent EBay auction purchase which I bought from a US seller in anticipation of my trip:
I seethe with jealousy. I only made it to a couple coin shops in my time there, as well as the big show in Tokyo, which was an excellent experience. One thing I wish I'd known about was the Currency Museum. I had no idea it existed when I was there. https://www.imes.boj.or.jp/cm/english/ Someday I hope to get back to Japan...lovely and fascinating country.
Very interesting why the OGP is printed in both Japanese and English. Nice additions to a collection. Thanks for posting.
Wow, now I’m bummed out that I didn’t go to that. I looked at the link and it’s right around the corner from where I was staying.
The last year of Akihito is year 31, or "平成三十一年" or "平成31年." So 2019 coins will have either that or the Reiwa characters I typed above. Looking at past Emperor change-overs, the outgoing Emperor's coins have far less mintage than the incoming, but that doesn't mean that will be the case in 2019. I haven't seen any mintage figures yet. The 2020 JNDA Catalog doesn't list them, either.
