What is required for a coin to be considered "minted at X mint"? Only the striking of the coin? Do the planchets have to be made at that mint also to officially be considered from that mint? Is there a minimum requirement by law in order to have a certain mint mark?
I don't know the answer but to add on to this question, for a while all the dies were made in Philly so, does the coin count as being minted in the mint location or where the die that put and image on it and gave it value where it was minted? This is like the question if a tree falls in the woods and no ones around does it make a sound?
Exactly! I was going to also mention the dies haha. Do they have to be made at a certain location too? Does the design have to be drawn at a certain location? If the only requirement is the location of strike, what's to stop the mint from rolling a machine somewhere and producing "special location" coins. I can see it now... "Come get your special Grand Canyon minted coins" or "Limited Edition coins minted at Statue of Liberty".
It's strictly the location at which the coins were struck. You can have a die made anywhere, you can have a planchet made anywhere, it's only when the two come together that you have a coin produced. The presses that manufacture coins are not exactly mobile. They are extremely heavy and large. I seriously doubt that the mint will start creating a mobile mint to produce various "Mint Mark" coins. The dies typically are made in Philadelphia and then shipped to the various Mint Branches. I know back in the day the dies were shipped to the branch mints without mint marks. Once they arrived the mint marks were stamped into the dies. Not sure if that is still the process today. So, yes a mint mark designates where the coin was produced.
Most likely the working hubs are made in one location and sent to the various mints to make as many working dies as needed to fulfill mintage requirements. According to Wiki all working dies are made in Denver. I doubt that. Each mint should make its own planchets except for the cent. Each mint would be sent rolled alloy to make planchets. I think only the West Point mint makes gold and platinum coins. Silver coinage is mostly from San Fran and some special issues from West Point. Philly and Denver make all circulating coinage. San Fran makes some uncirculating and all proof coinage, also. Most rules for U.S. coinage are set up by Congress. Actually there have been many other mint locations in the past. Carson City, New Orleans, to name a couple. Congress could always authorize another mint location, although, highly unlikely.
Question 1: Where the coin is struck. Question 2: No Question 3: No. I believe that both San Francisco and West Point have struck silver eagles without a mint mark. Mint marks ("D" was actually used for two different Mints): None or "P" "D" "C" "O" "S" "CC" "D" - Denver "M" "W"
The entire process of making working dies has recently changed. The images are digital and each die is individually machined now by a high precision Swiss-made state of the art CNC lathing machine. No more hubs and annealing. Done. Over. It's direct from digital to working die. It's what caused the shape of the "U" to change on the ASE's. The "U" in the digital font came with the serif on it and it had to be that way.
There is a lot to this thread and some more information needs to be presented. What determines what mint made a coin is usually where it is struck. But there are some things to consider. Coins do not always indicate on them where they were struck. The bullion ASE's have been mentioned, but there have also been cents and quarters struck at both San Francisco and West Point with no mint marks, and there is the 1840 medium letter half dollar that has no mintmark but it was struck in New Orleans. Then there are coins struck somewhere other than the mint that have mintmarks on them. It was mentioned that the mint wasn't likely to move a press so as to strike coins at other locations, but that is exactly what they did at the 1915 Pan-Pacific Exposition. The San Francisco Mint sent a couple of presses to the Exposition and struck some of the commemorative on site most notable the $50 round and Octagonals, and I believe some of the half dollars. All with S mintmarks. And they have shipped presses to various locations for first striking ceremonies. Planchets At one time the mints made all of their own strip and planchets. (although sometimes one mint would ship planchets to another depending on demand and/or surplus capacity.) Today all of the cent planchets come from an outside supplier. Outside suppliers supply strip to the mints for Nickels, dime, quarters and halves but the mints process the strip into planchets themselves. For the dollar coins the suppliers have supplied strip and at other times they have supplied planchets. I do not know what the current arrangement is. For gold and silver planchets the mint supplies the metal to the fabricators and they ship it back as ready use planchets (for a fee of course). Dies Until 1997 ALL of the dies for all of the mints were made in Philadelphia and shipped to the different mints. in 1997 Denver opened their own die shop. Now Philadelphia supplies them with a master Hub and they make all of their own dies. All other dies still come from the Philadelphia die shop. In years past when the dies were shipped to the branch mint they DID have the mintmarks already in them. There were a few cases where dies were shipped without the mintmarks in them, but there is also correspondence from the mints either asking if the dies can be used without the mint mark or reporting the lack of mintmark, requesting replacements, and that the unmarked dies were being shipped back. In general the branch mints did not have engraving dept and were not able to work on the dies (other than surface grinding/polishing) and probably could not anneal and reharden them if they wanted to. I can only think of two times off the top of my head when an unmarked die had a mintmark added and then used. One was the 1854 O Huge O quarter, and the other was the 1870 S three dollar gold. (The one and three dollar dies were unmarked. They added the mintmark to the three because they needed it right away to strike the cornerstone piece. but in the same dispatch to Philadelphia they reported that they had already struck 2000 gold dollars before they noticed they had no mintmark. They wanted to know if they could release them or should they melt them down and await the replacement dollar die?) Another interesting tidbit. In 1956 the government shut down the San Francisco mint and down graded it to just and Assay Office. In 1964 in the midst of a coin shortage they once again began striking business strike pieces but with no mintmarks. Starting in in 1968 they began making proofs and business strikes for circulation. They made business strikes from 1968 to 1974, and again in 79 and 80 with S marks on them. They also made more without marks. But all this time San Francisco was still just an Assay Office. It was not raised back up to Mint status until 1988. So are pieces struck at someplace that ISN'T a mint coins?
On a side note, how many of you know there was another mint built, but never used or quite finished? It was located in The Dalles, Oregon. I wrote an article about it a few years back in Numismatic News. Just an interesting fact few people know about.
My understanding was that construction was started but never finished so to say "there was another mint built" is inaccurate at best. Al Gore ran for President once but that doesn't make him a former President does it?
I believe the building was completed. But they never installed presses or other machinery. My point was that the U. S. gave the ok to start a mint there. And then backed out on it.
Nope. There was no digital font that exactly matched the previously hand sculpted ASE reverse font. When you look carefully at the changeover, there are also far more subtle differences. My source? John Mercanti himself.
I believe they finished construction on the building but they ever furnished it with the needed equipment, furnaces etc. I believe the officers were appointed but the workmen were never hired. I can believe the font didn't exist, but I find it hard to believe they couldn't have scanned the existing font and created a digital font from it. There is an entire subculture out there that creates digital fonts for the fun of it
This is true, but we're talking a fabulously expensive system here, not some jabronie's laptop PC. Not all fonts are created equal. Some have licensing DRM, like built into the firmware. FWIW, I was tweaking and building entire fonts in 1989 on a Macintosh IIx.
