What type is it? 1873 Japan 50 Sen (Big Pic)

CIVITAS

Krause's blurry pictures are of little help on this coin.

Was wondering if anyone can clear up exactly what type this one is, why it is that type, and whether it is any more valuable than the other type.

Krause lists the Type 1 as valuable in the latest 19th century edition, but lists the Type 2 as valuable in the previous edition. A lot of help that is.

Does anyone here actually know? (I'm lookin' at you Roy... ).

Many thanks for any help.

satootoko

Well Josh, it's like this -

The character "nen" ("year") follows the number 6 (right to left), and is the first Kanji character to the right of the word "Sen", at about 4 o'clock in your picture.

According to Krause (3rd Ed.) "The type II has a very long lower horizontal stroke" in the character "nen", and is the more valuable.

In the JNDA catalog (2006 Ed.) the picture of the long stroke version comes first, but in the text it's the second Meji 6 line, and the more valuable.

In Cummings' Modern Japanese Coinage (2d Ed.) it's designated Type B, and a higher value is quoted.

Jacobs & Vermuele's Japanese Coinage (1972 Ed.) doesn't mention the varieties.

Your coin's bottom stroke exactly matches the pictures of the long stroke in both the JNDA and Cummings, so in my opinion you have the more valuable variety, no matter whose designation you apply to it.

I don't have the new 4th Ed. 19th Century Krause, so I can't comment on whether they've decided to follow Cummings' lead and reversed their type designations, or there's some other reason for re-evaluating the relative values.

Does yours have any luster at all? If so, that great detail, especially in what I call the "feathers" at 3 o'clockof the inner circle, would boost it from XF to at least AU IMHO.

BTW, none of the authorities I've consulted clearly state which calligaraphy is more common, but the relative values imply that the long stroke is in shorter supply. My own experience goes the other way - I've had a long stroke for years, and still have a vacancy in the spot reserved for a short stroke. The only one I've personally seen was an ugly AG that I wanted no part of!

CIVITAS

Ahhhhh, things are finally coming into place.

It appears in addition to the fact that Krause went against at least 15 years of precedent of the Type II being listed as the more valuable in their catalog, they completely omitted the way to determine Type I from Type II. They left in the diagnostics of determining the 1871 Types by position of the flame tip between the dragon's spines, which makes things extremely confusing.

Thanks a lot for the great info, Roy. Much appreciated.

The coin does in fact have some nice soft lustre under the toning. NGC called it an MS-62, for whatever that's worth.

satootoko

<< <i>The coin does in fact have some nice soft lustre under the toning. NGC called it an MS-62, for whatever that's worth. >>

Well, I did say "at least AU".

Seriously, it's a great example of the difficulty in grading solely from pictures. I really don't see any luster beneath that tarnish in your photo (scan?).

BTW I do collect tarnished Japanese silver - mainly because almost all the pre-WW II silver is either tarnished or harshly cleaned.

sumnom

Thanks for the explanation, Satootoko.

Stork

Thanks Roy...I was trying to puzzle it out with only the JNDA--my other books weren't handy (and I have NO idea where my 19th century Krause ran off to). I had the gist, but my JNDA actually had three versions of the nen character, two of which I was having a hard time telling apart.

So Josh, when is that 50 sen hitting your website? I looked for it last night and ended up getting something completely different.


Cathy

CIVITAS

Cathy,

I don't know just yet. We're in the middle of preparing another round of eBay auctions. Then we're doing inventory to figure out what stuff we just need to dump and free up some cash. Too much stuff sitting around that we're just never going to do anything with no matter how many times we look at it and say "I'll get to that eventually."

Glad you were able to find something else though.