I just picked up another ¥100 coin the other day.
I don't know why exactly, but these are becoming a little scarce these days. At least at the coin shop I frequent. No idea why that is. Maybe with the price of silver crawling upward, people are starting to hoard them more?
All of them are 60% silver. That may be kind of a let down compared to the 90% US junk silver, but hey — silver is silver, eh? The coins themselves are 4.8 g, meaning there is about 2.9 g of silver in them, giving them a melt value of roughly $3.50.
If I go to one of the online auctions, I am finding them around ¥1000 ($6.79) at the lowest and much more at the highest, which is a little crazy. I suppose people on online auctions get a little carried away and don't check the actual value before bidding.
While I'd love to have more, I'm not chasing crazy prices. So I just pick one or two up every now and then when I can find them at more reasonable rates.
There are three of them. The first, minted in 1958 and 1959 is my favorite of the bunch. A phoenix on the obverse and a neat design on the reverse.
Unfortunately this design was not long for the world. The phoenix was a symbol of the emperor and given the post-war ideology, the postwar government decided that it was inappropriate. Whether a good call or not, I don't mind that the phoenix went away, but it's a shame that the cool pattern on the reverse did as well.
The next version of the coin, lasting from 1959 until 1966 (silver would be withdrawn from coins the next year) was this rice stalk design:
Not bad. Rice is very important to Japan, so it is a more appropriate symbol. The reverse changed to a lifeless 100.
In 1964 while the rice ¥100 was still going, there was a special commemorative ¥100 coin to mark the Tokyo Olympics. The design itself is fairly standard.
The coin was meant to circulate alongside the rice stalk coin, but collectors hoarded it and it quickly disappeared from view.
I don't have a huge number of these — like I wrote above, I just buy one or two whenever I see them for reasonable prices — but I enjoy the ones I have.