An iconic Japanese gold coin, the largest of which were the Obans. These ovoid monetary coins, in gold plate, were given as gifts to Samurai or to the Royal court. The obverse has four large Kiri crest stamps and the reverse has three large Kiri stamps and two smaller mint maker stamps which are quite clean. This is an Oban with hand made horizontal crenulations and the ink calligraphy seems to have been redrawn after the original ink was flaking. Cleaned at some point it its existence. The reverse appears to have been lightly cleaned many years ago. This is from the Manem period of 1860-1862 and are quite scarce and usually have spirited bidding
Provenance: Private collection of a world traveler, Baltimore, MD. Purchased from "Specialist in Oriental Coins "Albert A. Tom in the mid-1970's.

Additional comments added on 4/3/24: The Standard Catalog of Japanese Coins List the Manen Obans as 112.4 g, .344 gold and .639 silver. This is the lowest of all the obans. Jacobs says it is 36.7%. In looking at dozens and dozens of websites and descriptions and history of the Oban, only found the 165 gram version with a gold content of 70-76%. Could find no listings of gold content for the 112-114 gram version offered here. A local dealer with an X-Ray fluorescent machine/gun tested it at stated level and with a large library found the Japanese equivalent of their Red Book. When he found this version, the gold content was consistent with the book. We never found the gold content listed in dozens of previous auctions of this 112 gram version. 112.3 grams, 79x135mm, 33+% gold, the rest is silver