The 33rd Tokyo International Coin Convention took place in Tokyo from April 29 to May 1. It was one of the first major fairs that could be held again since the beginning of the Covid pandemic. Dealers and collectors from Japan and across the world met at the impressive facilities of the Royal Park Hotel. There was a huge crowd of visitors as coin enthusiasts took advantage of this opportunity to exchange ideas with like-minded people. We too attended the Tokyo coin fair, albeit on a small scale: our Japanese language translator Michał Skubisz, who has been in Japan for a few weeks now, was there on April 29. It was his first coin show ever. In this article, he shares his impressions with us.
A Newcomer Reports
At first, I was a little overwhelmed: the luxurious hotel, the busy crowd. A whole new world opened up in front of me. Since it was my first coin fair, I was curious to see what it would look like. It was exciting to see the world I regularly translate texts about live and in action – to recognize many things and discover completely new aspects at the same time.
The fair was very well attended. There were long queues at the entrance, I had to wait an hour to get in. And the large crowd did not become smaller throughout the day.
Numerous participants from home and abroad were there: a total of 41 Japanese booths of associations and dealers, plus 13 booths from participants from across the world, which were located on one side on the hall. A team of our sponsor Künker had travelled there from Germany. Our friends and supporters of Stephen Album Rare Coins, Heritage Auctions and NGC (all from the US) as well as Éditions Gadoury from Monaco had booths too – this illustrates the world’s current interest in the Japanese market. A total of 6 mints also took the opportunity to present their products at the fair, including the Singapore Mint, the Monnaie de Paris and the Royal Mint from Great Britain.
The fair was a wonderful opportunity for us to get in touch with the Japanese coin world and to present our new website GekkanCoins. Therefore, I talked to many dealers. They were always very friendly and many of them were highly interested in what I had to say. I was pleased to see that many took a few of the flyers home that we had published for the fair and said they would display them in their coin shops. It is thanks to the active support of our friends from Taisei Coins that we were allowed to distribute flyers at the fair in the first place, and they also displayed the flyers at their booth. Thank you very much!
Of course, I was particularly pleased that a few dealers were already familiar with GekkanCoins. Others may be familiar with it since the fair. All in all, I was very impressed with the fair. It was great to meet so many coin dealers and coin enthusiasts whose passion for the subject is so evident and highly contagious.
Here you can access the website of the organisers of the TICC, the Japan Numismatic Dealers Association.
Click here to visit our Japanese version of CoinsWeekly: GekkanCoins.
