I try to resist buying a lot of coin. There is a coin shop right nearby that I stop at every now and again to look at old coins. They are usually expensive enough that I can more easily resist buying. But ebay.... ebay is dangerous. For that reason I usually avoid it. But then I read @trumpman's posts talking about his latest coin buys and that makes me want to browse ebay...
I got this guy in the mail the other day and have been admiring it.
(Sorry, I was going to get out my dSLR for glam shots, but my kids are up now... I wasn't fast enough, so iPhone snaps will have to suffice.)
The 1964 100 yen Olympics coin is a commemorative coin that was issued by the Japanese government to celebrate the 1964 Olympics held in Tokyo. The coin has a diameter of 22.5mm, weighs 4.8g, and is made of 30% copper, 10% zinc, and 60% silver.
The text under the 100 says "Showa 39 year" which is the 39th year of the reign of the Showa Emperor (Hirohito), or 1964.
The back gives us a little bit more design, with the torch and the Olympic symbol. The text reads nihon koku, "Japan" on top and hyaku en, "100 yen" on the bottom.
80 million of these Olympic 100 yen coins were produced. It was a commemorative coin but was intended to be circulated alongside the regular ¥100 coins (which were also 60% silver at the time), but collectors bought them all and there is no record of any of them actually entering circulation.
I don't know how popular ¥100 coins were back in the day. There were ¥100 banknotes in circulation at the time and they remained until they were removed around 1974 I think. Silver did start to spike up around the late 60s so the silver in the ¥100 coins was removed around that time. That alone probably made the coins pretty popular for collectors, but for ordinary people, they might have preferred bills until they had no choice.
Anyway, this is a great one to have.
The 1964 Olympics were a huge deal to Japan. It was the first Olympics to be held in Asia. It was a symbol of Japan's recovery from the war and a symbol of Japan's reformation as a peaceful state. It allowed the country to show off fancy new technology like color television broadcasts.
Japan used the games to push sports education throughout the nation. Children in Japan still have one of the highest favorable levels of sports participation of developed countries as a result of this.
As for technology, maybe one of the biggest introduced to coincide with the games was the bullet train, linking Osaka and Tokyo.
Overall it was a really big deal.
They issued a few other coins for the games. There was a sweet ¥1000 coin that I want to try to get next.
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David LaSpina is an American photographer and translator lost in Japan, trying to capture the beauty of this country one photo at a time and searching for the perfect haiku. |
A thousand yen coin? That’s interesting. That’s not something you’d want misplace or leave in the copy machine too often.
heh yeah imagine if a ¥1000 coin entered circulation and the bill was removed. That would make me be much more careful of my coins. As is I usually don't carry ¥500 coins for that reason (or not more than one of them). Too easy to misplace.
That’s interesting. I never pay much attention to the coins that I have. I just pop them in the coin pocket on my wallet and regularly use them when I pay for things.
I do often use convenience store copy machines, though, and I try not to use ¥500 coins then because I’ve forgotten to get may change a number of times. I’ve also been the beneficiary of forgotten change a lot of times, so I’m pretty sure that I’ve broken even there.
My kids recently learned that some of the UFO catcher games at the arcade require two coins instead of one, and that people often don’t realize this when playing so they put their last coin in and leave it there when the machine doesn’t start for them. Now when my kids go to the arcade, the first thing they do is push the change dispenser and see if they can get free tokens, which often they can.
Got some money from Kenya. My nephew is so excited: Dude, got a giraffe on it!
heh cool! Foreign money can be really fun.
Oh, I spend a great deal of time anymore on eBay. I love the challenge of the auction.
Anyway, that is a nice find, it is really cool. I like the history you provided as well. I was on the mainland of Japan from Okinawa only a couple of times, and was able to ride a bullet train once. It was a great experience.
It's fun, but it's also a little too easy to get sucked into a billing war and spend more than you intended.
The bullet train is fun, isn't it? I always enjoy when I ride on it.
Nice find! I love silver coins!
Thanks!
Anytime!
I can see the desire to own one of these. Nice pick up.
Thanks! I haven't been able to indulge my desire for collecting coins in a while, but I'm slowly giving in. There are some cool silver Japanese coins to collect.