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Ah...once again, I turn to this great forum for help...the knowledge here as a group is tremendous.

So I was visiting a friend a few weeks ago a couple hours from my house and we saw a couple of garage sale signs near his place and did some browsing. I did find a very nice foreign lot and did more than well on it. Anyway, there was this single plastic page of asian coins in the box too. Can you take a look and tell me what you think? I did a little research, but would prefer to hear from this group first before commenting further. The weights of each coin are listed below as well.

Front of coins: http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/85 ... front.jpg/
Back of coins: http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/63 ... sback.jpg/

Weights (I assumed 1.6 grams for the card/holder. The estimated numbers below are for the coin only):
row 1 (single coin): 25.7g
row 2, 3 coins. A: 25.8g B: 25.4g C: 25.7g
row 3, 2 coins (yen): A: 22.6g B: 24.6g
row 4, 3 coins: A: Kiang Nan Province 24.6g B: An-Hua Province 26g C: An-Hua Province 25.9g

Row 1: Chinese Dollar.


Row 2: Unknown

Row 3: Japanese Yen.


Row 4: Chinese 'Dragon Type' Dollars.

Chinese Dollar Row 4.

Be very wary of all these Chinese dollar coins. Plenty of counterfeits using various metal content.

I've NEVER bought one of those chinese "silver" coins that wasn't a fake.

Authentic ones can be quite valuable.

I'll play. I can take row 3.
On the obverse it says: 大日本 (dainippon, short for dainippon teikoku, meaning the Empire of Japan). The date is 明治２７年 (meiji 27 nen, meaning the 27th year of the emperor Meiji. Meiji 27 was the year 1894. Actually, now that I look again, one is Meiji 45 (1912) also.)

I have no idea what the "416" & "900" on either side of One Yen means.

On the reverse at the top is the crysanthemum flower, the official symbol of the royal family in Japan. In the center it reads 一円, or one yen, but it is actually the old character for en.

I wonder why the two coins have different weights.

I can read some of the characters on the Chinese coins, but I will leave them to other experts.

shinnosuke wrote:I have no idea what the "416" & "900" on either side of One Yen means.

416 Grains, .900 fine (or translated into American English, 90% silver.)

To compare, the US Trade Dollar was 420 grains, .900 fine.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trade_dollar

I've bought some amazing fakes for the chinese dollars. Maybe you'll get lucky but I have yet to talk to anyone who has said they have purchased real ones.