Hello Silver & Gold stackers! Another week and I have another Japanese coin for you! This one is a doozie. This time we'll be looking at a silver ¥1000 coin that was made for the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. I'll give some info about the coin, then we'll look at both sides, and then some info on the sen in general.

Sound fun? Let's go!

Stats

Some basic coin stats for you:

20g
35mm diameter
2.5mm thickness
edge: reeded

and most importantly, it's 92.5% silver, so that means about 18.5 grams of silver.

Front side

The front side has Mount Fuji with cherry blossoms around it.

Above it reads "Japan" or "State of Japan" (日本国).

Below it reads "One thousand yen" (千円).

Back side

The back side features that big "1000 yen" in the middle and the Olympic rings.

Again we have some cherry blossoms to right and left.

Above we have "1964 Tokyo".

and below we have the same date just in the Japanese style: Shōwa 39.

About

15 million of these were produced for the Olympics, along with ¥100 version which I covered here. The 1964 Olympics were a big deal for the country. It was in many ways Japan's reintroduction to the world. They were no longer a militant nation on the path of warfare, nor a destroyed nation, but now were a peaceful country, rebuilt and open to doing business with the world. They would use the games to show off a bunch of high technology that they had been developing, such as the bullet train.

The coin was intended for circulation, and evidently a few of them were used, but collectors gobbled them up within the first year. This and the ¥100 version were the first commemorative coins Japan produced. They have continued making commemorative ¥1000 coins nearly every year since.

Let's look at some more shots. For all my camera lenses I don't own a macro lens, so I'm using my smartphone. They came out pretty well all things considered.

Here it is with that 20 sen coin laying on top. Not much of a contest between them!

And here it is laying on top of a Morgan dollar. A little more equality between these two.

Overall

Another beautiful Japanese coin! I kind of like this design less that the 20 Sen Piece I shared last week, but it still is quite nice. The drawing of the mountain and the cherry blossoms is nice. Too bad the other side is just meh.

NGC lists a melt value is around $14 and a half and the coin value is around $20. Well, that's for extra fine. As you can tell from the photos, I don't think this is XF. Lots of scratches and a few gunky parts. Maybe I can clean off that gunk without scratching it more, not sure. Any suggestions?

Anyway, I have a few more coins on order from around Japan. None have arrived yet but hopefully at least one gets here by next week so I can do another post in a week.

❦

David LaSpina is an American photographer and translator lost in Japan, trying to capture the beauty of this country one photo at a time and searching for the perfect haiku.