Japanese Yen, 1881, anyone collect these?

SimonW

Bought this today for my "Coins with Stories" box of twenty. It fit all the criteria. Big, old, attractive, interesting, really cool history.

I've dived into it a little bit, but not the counterstamp yet. This was made during a time of great change for Japan.

There was a great government scandal, nobody knew what was going to happen, political parties were a mess, a constitution was in the works (or not), additionally the Samurai had been organizing uprisings after being stripped of their privilege and status these battles culminated to a breaking point in the early 1880's. Lots of stuff. I need to do more research.

Anyone have any info? Who collects these?

coinkat

The so-called Gin countermark was used by the Japanese Government in 1897. Yen denomination coins were demonetized as Japan adopted a gold standard. Several million yen coins were gin marked and used overseas in Japanese territories including Korea and Taiwan. Many that were marked were later melted.

I see these coins as being part of Japanese economic and numismatic history. They are collected… I have one or two. They are raw… possibly slab worthy but I have not kept up with the market which is part of the reason they have remained raw. I don’t know if there is a break down by date of Gin marked yen coins. I tend to doubt that there is… And even if there was, so much of the population has been melted to the point where determining/estimating a surviving population would be very problematic.

jt88

1880 - 1886 gin is pretty scarce. It is very much worth collecting.

SimonW

Thanks @coinkat ! Great info.

I was trying to ascertain value, seems all over the place

I feel like the countermark makes them more interesting, adds history and interest. Maybe that adds to value maybe not, honestly I don't really care.

I'm looking at some of the latter dates without countermark, they seem to be quite available.

coinkat

I need to dig out the ones I have. If I recall correctly, mine are early to mid 1890s and would likely grade within the AU spectrum… finding comps is not easy.

abbyme24

I put together a little write up and shared some pics, but I’ve tried to post the reply a few times now and it apparently needs to be approved.

lermish

@abbyme24 said:
I put together a little write up and shared some pics, but I’ve tried to post the reply a few times now and it apparently needs to be approved.

Try to post the text only. It will never be approved, some forum glitch. Do you have any numbers or symbols to start paragraphs? Try removing those also. Then the pics in a follow up post.

abbyme24

Thanks @lermish but no dice. No special characters or leading numbers. Not seeing anything stick out that is different than any of my other posts.

I even tried with a new reply that worked and then edited it with the text and it ended up just deleting the reply entirely.

lermish

abbyme24

So weird that neither of us could post it, thanks for sending the screenshot. Here are the pics I referenced:

abbyme24

@SimonW said:
Thanks @coinkat ! Great info.

I was trying to ascertain value, seems all over the place

I feel like the countermark makes them more interesting, adds history and interest. Maybe that adds to value maybe not, honestly I don't really care.

I'm looking at some of the latter dates without countermark, they seem to be quite available.

For earlier yen a gin stamp brings a 50-100% premium, a bit less for later yen.

SimonW

@abbyme24 said:
So weird that neither of us could post it, thanks for sending the screenshot. Here are the pics I referenced:

Thank you so much for the info! That's really a nice coin. I think I saw a proof like one on ebay, they were asking something like 5k. Even if it's overpriced, hearing you talk about it, it makes sense that the seller might ask that much.

abbyme24

You’re welcome! Happy to share whatever knowledge I can.

The one you are referring to on eBay is probably mine posted above

SimonW

@abbyme24 said:
You’re welcome! Happy to share whatever knowledge I can.

The one you are referring to on eBay is probably mine posted above

Oh yeah! It is the same one. I misremembered the amount for sure. Quite a special coin it seems.

coinkat

The 1882 PL with the Gin mark has to be rare.

abbyme24

@coinkat said:
The 1882 PL with the Gin mark has to be rare.

Yes, to give you an idea of the relative scarcity, PCGS has straight-graded 450 Yen from that year. Of those, 40 are PL. And of those 40 PL, only 3 have a Gin stamp.

Edit: to further expand, PCGS has straight-graded roughly 18,000 Yen from years where a Gin stamp was possible. Of those, approximately 2,100 have a Gin stamp. And of those 2,100, only 6 are PL.