Why does a coin even need a mintmark ?....

or even a date, for that matter ?

I guess it's tradition ?

ancient coins aren't really dated.

a coin's primary purpose is for the public to simply use it to buy stuff, right ?

of course no dates would not be popular with numismatists, but we aren't the reason coins existed in the old days, but that has changed in modern times, eh ? Now the mint(s) sell to collectors for profit.

coins were in short supply at various times, like pre Civil-war years.

Why not Indian head cents with no date, for example ?

Do you mintmark a coin , so you can figure out Joe Smith at Denver mint is slacking off, or something ?

just something to think about.

Now the gov't is broke, and wants its' seignorage on coins sold to collectors.

RCM probably started this ?

 

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you make a good point there

 

So I know which slot they go into on my dansco album. Not really sure, but to me it makes collecting more challenging and interesting. I think I prefer them with date and mint mark.

 

An example of why from the Spanish colonial mints:

It was found in the 1640's at the Lima mint that the mint workers were lowering the silver content of the coins they made and pocketing the difference. This caused a great deal of chaos in the economic system, since when people discovered this, they were compelled to create a lowered standard of exchange relative to coinage of other places. The royal degree from the Spanish king, besides punish the mint workers, was to make mandatory the impression of the date, assayer's initials and mint insignia. That way, any coin found after that time could be traced definitively to its source in the event of cheating.

May not sound immediately applicable to the case of IHC's, but the tradition lives on.

 

so basically there is no compelling reason for a modern coin to even have a date, eh ?

It might as well have a lot number on it to, to identify the press operator, shift, etc., like it was tube of toothpaste !

things that make you say.... Hmmmm !

 

Aw, c'mon Doug. You're takin' all the fun out of collecting by proposing this........

 

I did say this would not be popular with numismatists !

However there is no real reason a coin needs a date on it, is there ?

 

Doug's right, with the precious metal removed from our coins, the need for them to have mintmarks is rapidly disappearing.

But ancient coins do have dates...



With the date LB, year two of the reign of Diocletian.



Dated AN V, the fifth year after the founding of the colony.

 

It´s fun to know when and where things are made. A coin, a painting, a TV, a fan or whatever. In my book that´s a very good reason to date etc. coins. I want production dates and places stamped on more stuff, not less.

 

Remember that the actual salaries of the Mint Employees is not from the money they produce but from your tax dollars. So to make sure they earn the money we pay them we make them put info on the coins to see just what they are producing. The dates tell us how much they work per year and at which Mint. Some Mint workers don't want you to know this so they leave thier place of work off the coins but we all know they are in Philidelphia anyway. Another reason for the dates and Mint marks and also the initials of the designer is with out this info there would be all that empty space on our coins and the next thing would be companies like McDonalds would be placing advertisements there. Studies were made by Politians a long time ago about where to place the Mint marks. None of them knew about the reverses on coins so they made the Mint start putting those markings on the Front.
Another item has already been noted also. Many companies like Dansco, Whitman, Littleton, etc have been producing Albums and folders with spaces for coins with different dates and Mint marks. If there was none on the coins, what would you put in all those places????????

 

The only reason to have anything on a coin is to make it identifiable and difficult to counterfeit. I guess someone figured that the year and a mintmark was better than another slogan.

 

As I think about some of the coin types in our history, I think the Barber series could have been produced without a mintmark or date. Afterall, they were considered to be boring in design in its day and the style wasn't changed for 25 years.

 

Actually the mints operating budget does come from the seniorage of the coin they produce not from tax dollars. They don't normally get appropriations from the federal budget but from funds held back for operating purposes when they turn the seniorage over to the general fund.

 

It helps the "common man" establish that the nation issuing it is/was/ or will be sov

It helps the "common man" establish that the nation or group issuing it is/was/ or will be sovereign. It's not so important today but before this revolution of ready information when a person was in the mists of a deal and money was demanded or offered for service or goods people had to have some measure of assurance they would be getting a fair deal - why else have anything on a coin or a coin at all - you could just have 5 grams of gold, silver copper or whatever. With uniform coinage it speeds any business transaction up and saves time and trouble.
In effect though most never really look at their coins they know what they are worth in face value at a glance and this smooths the running of any economy.
Can you imagine all of us standing around at the grocery store with differing amounts of gold, silver, and copper and each transaction would turn into a hour long nightmare.
With hundreds of millions of us even a millisecond glance at a quarter tells us instantly what we have and what it's worth - the date just further insures reliability.

 

My understanding is that the most basic reason is: quality control, which was sort of mentioned above. That is: so we know where/when the coins came from.

But, then, how come no "W's" (except for special sets) ?

 

In addition to all the reasons posted......

Perhaps there is another reason for placing dates & mm on base metal coins. They could always be counter stamped with a new date & value like this 1887 Costa Rica 25 Centimos which was revalued to 50 Centimos in 1923.

Very best regards,
Collect89

 

But as long as the counterstamp is readily identifiable there is still no need for a either a date on it or the underlying host coin.

Yes when coins contained precious metal and nearly their face value in that metal dates and mintmarks had a quality control purpose. In todays fiat money coinage they do not and are merely kept due to tradition.

 

sorry to bring up an old thread,but if you look at it from a counterfieters veiw then if they never changed the date or mintmarks,all they would have to do is come up with on die set to start making their own,but if he shows up to the bank to trade in a large bag of quarters and they all have the same date and mint mark eyebrows would go up as the secret service was called,without the date and mintmark all coins would be the same and harder to detect fraud attempts.

 

Well then what was the reason for not putting a date on Buffalo nickels?


(Mind you I'm a new user and this is an attempt at humor.)

 

.....not bad!