  Antique Japanese coin.
This is a huge (2.5" diameter), thick coin I got on a recent trip to Japan. It commemorates the visit of the Emperor of Manchukuo to Japan in 1935. (Manchukuo was a puppet state that Japan supported in Manchuria from 1932 to 1945.)
I bought it in a small coin shop, where I had my interpreter ask the shop owner if he had any coins made out of metals that coins are not normally made out of. After some confusion, he looked around and didn't really find anything very interesting in that category, so I asked instead for coins that were at least made out of pure metals, and were in some other way unusual. I'm not a coin collector, so I have no interest in particular dates or mint marks or whatever it is that coin collectors are interested in. This one isn't even a real coin, it's more of a commemorative medallion, known to coin collectors as "exonumia", meaning "not real money so we don't want it".
I like this one because it's so big and heavy, satisfying to hold.
Source: Japan
Contributor: Theodore Gray
Acquired: 12 December, 2006
Text Updated: 12 April, 2009
Price: $10
Size: 2.5"
Purity: >90%
Sample Group: Coins
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