10 000 Yen - Heisei Speed Skating

Issued for the 1998 Nagano Winter Olympics, this piece is one of several gold commemoratives struck by the Japan Mint across two years leading up to the Games. Nagano's selection as host city in 1991 had been a surprise — it beat out Salt Lake City, Östersund, Jaca, and Aosta in a vote that would later be scrutinized as part of the IOC bribery scandal that consumed the organization through the late 1990s.

The .999 fineness was a deliberate step above the .900 standard used in earlier Japanese commemorative gold issues.