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I kid you not, dear reader, someone in Japan just paid tens of thousands of dollars for a single one-yen coin–a tiny disc of aluminium whose ordinary street value is just US$0.009.

A total of 153 bids were made via Yahoo! Japan’s auction site for the almost completely plain coin, with the winner promising to pay a massive $27,503 to make it their own.

Mint-made error coins, known more commonly as error coins, or eraa koin in Japan, are bought the world over by collectors who value them for both their scarcity and quirkiness. This particular one-yen coin was the result of a misalignment during the printing process, resulting in a blank-faced disc of metal whose only identifying features are a bulging top edge and a few traces of engraving which tell us that the coin was printed sometime in the Heisei era, which began in 1989 with the death of Emperor Hirohito and continues to this day, making it a relatively new coin.

▼Above: The majority of “Heisei”. Below: part of the kanji character for ‘yen’.

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Congratulations to the lucky winning bidder. Clearly you have more money than cents (sorry!), but whatever floats your boat. Personally, I’d have rather used the money to bid for a pop idol to come and clean my toilet…

Source and photos: Yahoo! Japan Auctions via Netorabo