Help Needed - One Yen Coin

to the Community!

The non-Latin characters on the coin are Japanese kanji, one of the three primary Japanese scripts. On this coin, the kanji is read clockwise.

Starting with the character closest to 416, the first group of three read "Empire of Japan." (Literally "Big Japan.")

The next two kanji refer to the Meiji era of Japanese history, which ran from October 23, 1868 to July 20, 1912.

The following two kanji make the number 19 (10 and 9, actually).

The final kanji reads "year."

So the coin was minted in the 19th year of the Meiji era by the Empire of Japan.

The 19th year is, of course, 1886, so kudos to Albert.

As a brooch, it will be of minimal value or interest to coin collectors - it has far more value to you as a personal family souvenir. Trying to "Turn it back into a coin" by attempting to remove the brooch will not work; the coin has already been damaged when the brooch was attached. It will be worth more to a jewellery enthusiast, as a coin brooch, than it would be worth as a damaged coin to a coin collector.

It probably won't help your mood when we tell you that this coin, if it hadn't been turned into a brooch, would be worth several hundred dollars - possibly more, given that world coin prices are going crazy right now. Here's the NGC database page for this coin. As-is, maybe $50 to $100. Minimum value $20 - that's the silver scrap value. Of course, part of the reason that undamaged coins are valuable, is that many of them were melted down - or turned into brooches (I have seen numerous Japanese yen that have had brooch mounts torn off them, so it seems to have been an unfortunately common fate).

Of course, if it hadn't been turned into a brooch, your ancestor probably wouldn't have kept it at all. So I guess we can't really complain.

I would assume the brooch is still mounted and intact; you can see the tip of the pin poking out at around 8 o'clock.

Indeed! I missed that ...

Better intact than with it broken, so definitely leave as-is. For a pricier, earlier date yen like this, were it just broken mounts there... it might actually be worth having a jeweler remove them.

Anyway, presents fairly well... some decent monetary value left to it. Bet it could snag USD $100 or so on ebay.