Money in Japan, Part II
MsMorrisine
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coin counterfeiting countermeasures
EagleEye/RS gave his post about Money in Japan
I just arrived home after an unexpected layover near O'Hare (medical!)
Went to Japan and toured the Tokyo Mint and took no pictures! I wanted to keep things moving for the rest of the family.
The tokyo mint makes proof coins, medals, and Orders (honors)
They get into their work and liked that I could speak of some US minting processes.
I had lots of questions which I wrote down, but almost the time I arrived I realized the pressing question I missed and must ask without fail -- milk spots on silver. The guide was a mint worker but was not so technically inclined to answer. However I tried to ask about "white spots" on silver and he seemed not to know about such issues. Perhaps they use different washes, perhaps he was out of the loop. But the Orders they make are essentially pure silver with cloisonné in some areas. They also make silver coins to go with some proof and mint sets.
The Guide was impressed with what little knowledge I had he invited me back next year. The year after they will move to a new facility.
The tour was light on ops, and had some old coin porn. They had single displays of their Ordersand some medals and they even had examples of the 3 sets of olympic medals they made.
I saw some proofs being struck a and post processed.
Post process #1 - how do they keep them nice and shiny? A thin layer of acrylic. I was surprised and got him to say it twice, separated by time. I also saw the coins being sprayed with something.
#2) they colorize coins - Bl,cyan,magenta, yellow, Wh. And the stamps are some type of upside down curved foam cone. The coins I saw were paint on silver
They also have a tiny two level die processthat puts 2 images on a single side. Tilt it slightly back and forth and they can make a galloping horse. This is somewhat different than the countermeasure where the coin must be viewed with a 90 tilt differential to view each image.
The guide really liked talking shop. I wish I knew more, although there were time limitations.
EagleEye/RS gave his post about Money in Japan
I just arrived home after an unexpected layover near O'Hare (medical!)
Went to Japan and toured the Tokyo Mint and took no pictures! I wanted to keep things moving for the rest of the family.
The tokyo mint makes proof coins, medals, and Orders (honors)
They get into their work and liked that I could speak of some US minting processes.
I had lots of questions which I wrote down, but almost the time I arrived I realized the pressing question I missed and must ask without fail -- milk spots on silver. The guide was a mint worker but was not so technically inclined to answer. However I tried to ask about "white spots" on silver and he seemed not to know about such issues. Perhaps they use different washes, perhaps he was out of the loop. But the Orders they make are essentially pure silver with cloisonné in some areas. They also make silver coins to go with some proof and mint sets.
The Guide was impressed with what little knowledge I had he invited me back next year. The year after they will move to a new facility.
The tour was light on ops, and had some old coin porn. They had single displays of their Ordersand some medals and they even had examples of the 3 sets of olympic medals they made.
I saw some proofs being struck a and post processed.
Post process #1 - how do they keep them nice and shiny? A thin layer of acrylic. I was surprised and got him to say it twice, separated by time. I also saw the coins being sprayed with something.
#2) they colorize coins - Bl,cyan,magenta, yellow, Wh. And the stamps are some type of upside down curved foam cone. The coins I saw were paint on silver
They also have a tiny two level die processthat puts 2 images on a single side. Tilt it slightly back and forth and they can make a galloping horse. This is somewhat different than the countermeasure where the coin must be viewed with a 90 tilt differential to view each image.
The guide really liked talking shop. I wish I knew more, although there were time limitations.
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Comments
Prices of modern Japanese coins are quite a bit higher in Japan than Krause has been reporting anyway.
The few coins I've been seeing tend to be badly worn.
It's highly frustrating trying to collect these coins but this tends to be true for other countries as well. There's
no information on pricing, availability, or other collectors and coins are hard to come by.
They also had a shiny new press -- sack & kiesselback -- which they used to strike 50¥ coins -- once. They strike once and hold the tonnage longer but I forgot to ask about the tonnage. They also had Schuler presses that were mid-age and presses that were from 1950's sci-fi movies - Asahi.Columbia
The 1¥ proof were double struck but the dies need a rag wipe as powdered aluminum was left after striking