u/FG-5MT

Finally got a Morgan at TICC yesterday!! (Morgan / Peace dollars are common in Tokyo coin shops, though.) This one was probably "cleaned", but I’m satisfied.

Look at it — almost the same diameter and thickness as my Mexican 8 reales and Imperial Japan 1 yen. I checked the weight with my kitchen scale and confirmed they are all around 26.8 g!

(Photos inside were not allowed, so only sharing the brochure and what I bought)

Huge crowd even before opening — clear coin otaku atmosphere. Collectors of all kinds, including overseas visitors. Almost everyone was talking only about coins.

Japanese coins dominated, especially silver yen pieces. There were also many pre-Edo and Edo-era coins. Most of the foreign booths mainly had slabbed coins.

Prices varied, but didn’t feel too high. Picked up a few things.

probably leftovers from my only US trip — a work trip to Irvine in 2006, when I was still new at work

• interesting: they don’t show the denomination in numerals on either side
• they all flip the opposite way
• 10c… smaller, thinner and lighter than 5c. I still can’t understand why they designed them that way
• found two different 5 cent reverses
• I didn’t know the US motto “E PLURIBUS UNUM” — sounds great, with an Enlightenment-era feel. interesting contrast with the openly religious “IN GOD WE TRUST”

* probably from work trips around 10 years ago

* “SINGAPORE” around the edge of the 1 dollar coin. cool

* 4 languages on the coins — English, Malay, Chinese

and Tamil. tried reading the Tamil… very hard

* originally I got interested in coins through 8R-type silver dollars. now I really want a Straits Settlements dollar — ancestor of the 1 Singapore dollar