What does the year on a coin mean?

Good place to start looking, yes.

In the U.S., the law specifically prohibits minting "backdated" coins. The Mint is required to destroy all of a year's dated dies on December 31 of that year. (This law was passed in response to a minor scandal involving Mint employees saving old dies so that they could sell "rare date" coins to collectors, usually for their own profit rather than the Treasury's.)

But there's no law saying the coins can't be dated *ahead*. Thus, for circulating coins, the Mint usually schedules production so that they'll run out of current-year dies in mid-December. That way, if their projections are off a bit and the old dies last a little longer than expected, they still won't get stuck with a bunch of perfectly good dies that they've got to throw out on December 31.

As already mentioned in this thread, the bullion coins are typically switched over to the new date even sooner, so that a stockpile of next year's coins will be ready for release on January 2. By tradition, those coins are never actually issued before the new year, even though there's no law saying they can't be.

For the first few years of the State quarters, the Mint was following the same practice as for the bullion coins: the first quarter of 2001 went into production around November 2000, for example, so that it could be released in quantity as soon as January 2001 arrived. They quit doing that around 2004, if I remember correctly: the 2004 Michigan quarter didn't go into production until 2004, so it was released in late January rather than the first week of January.

The Cheerios coins were another quirk; they were dated 2000 but minted in mid-1999, to allow time for packaging and distribution. A few of the cereal boxes containing the coins actually reached store shelves in the last days of December 1999, making these a rare exception to the tradition of not allowing coins to get out before their year date.

There've been exceptions in the other direction too, but they've required specific Congressional authorization in order to get around the no-backdating law. Unless I'm forgetting one, the most recent was the Thomas Jefferson commemorative silver dollar: it was struck in 1994, but dated 1993, so that it would have the appropriate anniversary dates 1743-1993. The law authorizing this coin explicitly required that it be dated 1993 (basically, in order to cover for the fact that Congress took so long to pass the legislation that the Mint could no longer get the coins into production while it was still 1993). Absent such specific authority, we get coins like the Capitol Visitor Center program dated 1800-2001: it would've made a lot more sense if it'd come out in 2000, but it didn't, and the Mint wasn't allowed to backdate it since Congress didn't say they could.

And of course, as others have mentioned, other countries follow completely different practices. Some routinely issue commemoratives backdated by a year or several; others routinely issue bullion coins dated the following year, like the Canadian ones that started this discussion. When the euro coins went into production in 1999, to be released in 2002, some nations' laws required their coins to be dated in the year minted, while other nations' laws required them to be dated in the year of intended issue--so you can find euros dated 1999, 2000, and 2001 from some countries but not from others.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide this ad.

Hi Numbers,

You always have something to add to any thread and increase my respect for you, thank you.

The open question is is minds obligated to ship all coins of specific year to federals by certan date (specified by a law or by repeating annually orders)? If no, then there is no hurry to ship all of them out, then there would be no hurry to start early. It looks more and more rather like a convinience for mint rather then a requirement.

 

Side note: Production of the euro coins began in mid-1998, see http://www.cointalk.com/t73765/#post710051 It's just that some member states picked 1999 as the first year to appear on the pieces, as 1-Jan-99 was when the euro was launched as a currency; and others picked 2002, as 1-Jan-02 was when the cash became legal tender.

Another interesting thing, when it comes to dates on coins, are the Spanish pieces minted until about 25 years ago (see post #4). They used to have an easily visible year which was the authorization date so to say; the actual production year appeared in tiny digits only. That changed in 1982 ...

Christian

 

Let me take a stab at answering the question of why there is a date on coins?. From what I always been led to believe, dates were originally put on coins in days of old when kings would debase the coins, they did not always tell anybody this was being done. Having a date would tell them what were what, so the more valuable ones could be pulled from circulation and which ones could be spent.
You might ask why they didn't just change the coins design?.. Well that will tip off too many people something was up with the value of their money. As I said, the king didn't want anybody to know since this would be very bad for his continued hold on power.
Of course the tradition once started has just continued. It has come in handy in 1919 when the Brits went from 92.5% to 50% in the silver coins and of course 1964 going from 90% to 0% (of course you did'nt need a date for this one).

 

Seems absurd. I just can't believe our federal guvmint would do something dumb.

 

Because for the time to make them and ship them, it would take to long. So it would be easy to make them early then have them ready the day they release them, if that is what you are asking.

 

AHHH, but how do you really know when they were made?

 

As usual GDJMSP should know this since he was there. Probably the person that started the dating stuff.
Not that I doubt that but I really wonder just how good dating was back then as to exact dates. I wasn't there so don't know.
This all really does lead to some interesting questions though. For example the Jewish Year. The Chinese Year. Shouldn't they be putting thier dates on their coins? If not, why? So how many other places have thier own calendar and if so, why not put thier dates on thier coins.
And just why is the dates on the front, obverse, instead of the rear, reverse? And then too, who decides on where the Mint mark goes on our coins and why?
And most important of all is why not put AD on modern coins and none have BC after the dates?

 

The final answer is: "It depends."

Interesting thread. I cut and pasted comments from Christian, MissSasha and Hontonai for my own knowledge base. Just to add some points:

Ancient Greek coins were generally not dated. However, a famous case is the "New Owls" of Athens had the names of the annual officials and then on the vase (amphora), a letter to represent the month.

In Republican Rome, the moneyer was a one-year job, and young men on the rise were appointed three at a time. Typically, one got to pick the designs. So we know from records what the chronology was, but this is not "dating" in the usual sense.

Roman and other ancients are dated by the year of the Ruler. Alexandria, Egypt, head of Ptolemy II, letter Beta, year 2. Later Alexandrian coins under the Romans continued this. In Rome itself, the coin was not dated, but the emperor was. If the coin was struck in his third consulate, then it said COS III, and meant the fifth or sixth year of rule. (Consul was a two-year job.)

The town of Antioch was so thrilled with Julius Caesar that they used his appearance as the mark of an era and the "Caesarian" year appears on coins into the Christian era.

...Which bring up a salient point...

UNIVERSAL dating was invented about 380 by Saint Jerome who calculated the Year of Our Lord, Anno Domini, since the Birth of Christ. So, there could be no dates on coins (in our meaning) until the concept of absolute time was invented.

The date on the "coin" (what we see) is often the date on the DIE (what the Mint cares about).

Thus the US Mint Director reported the numbers of coins struck for the fiscal year, regardless of what (calendar) years appeared on the dies and coins. Walter Breen invested a lot of effort in sorting that out to give us the figures we accept today for the Red Book, etc.,

 

That new money became legal tender in Azerbaijan, replacing the "old manat", on 1 January 2006. So it is reasonable to assume the coins were made in 2005.

Christian

 

They do.

There are and they do.

Are they? there is no absolute convention as to what constitutes the obverse and reverse of a coin. Many coins have the date on what is considered to be the obverse, but many have it on what is considered to be the reverse. Here in the US it is USUALLY on what we consider to be the obverse but look at the state quarters Which is the obverse? The side with Washington's bust or the side with the date? Other US coins with the date on the reverse would be the gold dollars, the three dollar gold piece, Columbian exposition half, Maine Centennial, Pilgrim Tercentennial, Huguenot, Lexington-Concord,Sesqucentennial half, Vermont half, Botanic garden dollar, and there are others.

On that you have me. As far as I know there is no law that says who decides. I'm not even sure if the mintmark is legally required to appear at all. The coinage act of 1965 forbid them, and the act in 1967 that restored them allowed them to appear but did not make them manditory. The law that moved the date and mottos to the edge of the dollar coins required the date and mottos to be moved to the edge but never said one word about the mintmark.

 

Now that is really interesting and I really never thought about the possibility that a coin is obverse or reverse. I suspect the Indian Head/Buffalo Nickel is great example of that. Almost every one I know says Buffalo Nickel.