Beautiful Japanese Yen

Nice looking coins. I've always liked the dragon figures, they even look better on silver :)

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Originally posted by gxseries

Here is an example of a die that I am talking about:

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Hi gxseries, how did you manage to get your hands on that die?

Hi Meiji03, just wanted you to know there are other collectors of these beautiful Meiji One Yen around...I am interested in Trade dollars of all types, and have as a subset of that collection a nearly complete set of the Meiji One Yen, and all are chopmarked. I prefer the chopmarked yen, 8 Reales, U.S and British Dollars, Piastres, etc because the chop is evidence that the coin actually was involved in the China trade, but I have some nice uncirculated ones as well.

Welcome!

Dennis

From my understanding of it, .2-.5 grams is a reasonable weight variance for a coin over 100 years old. I could be wrong. Someone who knows might chip in and tell me if it is real.

no no, I bought these from desert team coins. They were at the Long Beach coin show. I'm 90% sure these are real. I've been collecting these for awhile with over 100 pictures from heritage auctions and books. I have over 50+ pictures of fakes. I'll post some later. The beads around the dragon are not even and much too close together on fakes. The 416 and 900 are the wrong font on the fakes. Fakes also has very weak strikes and the dragons are not as tight but much looser. The rims are too thick on fakes, etc. Thanks for the concern though. Unlike pillars, I actually have experince with these ^^

I never said images are the only way, plus there are many types of counterfeits, all I was saying was that one of the easy ways to spot a fake is by the weak strike. My point was that .2-.5 grams is a reasonable weight variance. I agree with you there are fakes that could fool even pros like PCGS and ANACS. But a fake at that level is moot. If a fake can fool the pros, might as well be a real coin. You can go around stating that everything is fake then.. where do you stop? I know full well that counterfeiters are making coins with exact weights and real silver, but at some point you have to start believing that your coins are real, or what is the point of collecting in fear and doubt?
There are cheap fakes that are easily found out by looking at the picture and legends. Then there are fakes that you have to use a 10xloop to find. Then there are fakes that you have to do water drop testing on to see the flow of it compared to a real one. There are many level of fakes but for a Yen I paid 35 dollars for at a coin show really doesn't concern me as long as it is not the first. The day that PCGS starts slabbing fake coins is the day that I start collecting fake coins. I don't know if that day has come already.. I guess how would we know? Would we even care at that point? Theoretically if humans made the coins then humans can remake them. No point loosing sleep over it. Just enjoy the coins for the beauty and rarity, believing that they are real.

I will look at your picture in about 20 minutes after I take a shower.

Well done with the photoshopping technique. I am sure it is a counterfeit and you might want to agree. However, a typical silver ring test will not cut it - it does sound silver, as well as the mass of this coin when I last remember weighing it was 26.7grams, which is well in between the mass of your coins.

Take it this way: China is well known for counterfeiting silver yens. If a silver yen is worth 50USD or even more if it's UNC, let's say 100USD for number simplicity, and one ounce of silver is 10USD, 90 dollars profit is pretty good and imagine if you are to multiply that by several hundreds. Instant profit. If I am not mistaken, one of the reason why silver yen are heavily targeted so that they can practise counterfeiting the rarer Korean 5 yang coins.

I believe the original question asked in the other forum is "is it fake or real" and that is what I have been about.

Japanese silver yens are fortunately not too expensive, so if you got hit hard with that, I guess let it be a lesson. Some of the highly counterfeits are the Japanese Trade dollars and the Korean 5 yang, whans are VERY expensive, you are talking about 4 figure coins. Now that is something you DON'T wish to get hit. If you wish to have a sample of a coin, sure that's not a problem.

I disagree with your assessment of the variance of 0.2-0.5 grams. The Japanese mint in Osaka at that time was and still is one of the world's highest standard mints and weight variances is out of the question, forget Japanese error coins - that is almost unheard of. In fact, in most world silver crowns, a variance of 0.2grams can be considered quite serious, unless you have a VF- and lower coins, which you might expect a slight loss of weight. In fact, the standards are so high that Osaka mint was awarded contracts from Russia in 1916 while they were (and still are) enemies as well as striking silver coins for Korea.