Any information appreciated on this eastern (Japanese?) coin. Looks like cabbages in the circles on one side and waves in the background of both sides. 1" x 5/8" (2.5cm x 1.5cm) Weighs ~4g Thanks
The photos suggest it is a counterfeit or replica. Sorry, too busy to ID it for you but someone here will.
If it was real, which I have no clue, wouldn't it be one of those little ingot bars that were made of a mix of gold and silver? This looks familiar
Modern novelty medallion. Those "cabbages" are crude depictions of paulownia flowers, which are a common theme on Japanese numismatic/exonumismatic items.
Thanks for all your replies. l agree that it could be a replica: turned up unexpected in an ebay lot. Although I can't be sure until I know what the 'real' object looks like. (and it feels dense/heavy in the hand) I agree that the item looks like an Oban: but much smaller/lighter It also looks like the 'hello kitty' & 'peanuts' modern novelty gold bars. The paulownia reference is very enlightening: but didn't yield any matches in 'google images' I suspect the Japanese characters hold the key. I'd be grateful for ANY info on any of the eight characters. I found a site where i can draw a character http://kanji.sljfaq.org/draw.html to get the official version to plug into google translate. Limited progress so far.
Actually some of the characters look Chinese to me, could be wrong, but look a little weird for Japanese. Also you won't find the genuine version of this because it is a fantasy design. There are quite a few modern fantasy designs loosely based on Japanese coins out there, many having the denomination "100". Check with @manymore he is our resident expert things related to this.
I received a message from ScotsJohnR in regard to this thread. I'm really not familiar with Japanese coinage but I can help a little with the translation. The inscription on the first image, which is upside-down, is 百萬两 which translates as "one million ryo" (100 x 10,000 ryo). The ryo is the Japanese equivalent of the Chinese "tael" or "liang". Since the typical oban was about 10 ryo, I think, then this is certainly some type of modern fantasy piece. Regarding the second image, the characters at the top are 京都 which is the city of Kyoto. I'm not able to translate the three vertical characters. The first two characters appear to be 井譯. In Chinese, the character 井 means "well", as in a water well, and the character 譯 means "translate". The last character is Japanese (Hiragana? Katakana?) which I am unable to read. Gary
Thanks for such a comprehensive and definitive reply. Strange mix of character sets. I'd managed to translate "well": so this moves me a long way forward. Thanks
