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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Conder101, post: 2145452, member: 66&quot;]There is a lot to this thread and some more information needs to be presented.</p><p><br /></p><p>What determines what mint made a coin is usually where it is struck.&nbsp; But there are some things to consider.&nbsp; Coins do not always indicate on them where they were struck.&nbsp; The bullion ASE&#039;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.</p><p><br /></p><p>Then there are coins struck somewhere other than the mint that have mintmarks on them.&nbsp; It was mentioned that the mint wasn&#039;t likely to&nbsp; move a press so as to strike coins at other locations, but that is exactly what they did at the 1915 Pan-Pacific Exposition.&nbsp; The San Francisco Mint sent a couple of presses to the Exposition and struck some of the commemorative on site&nbsp; most notable the $50 round and Octagonals, and I believe some of the half dollars.&nbsp; All with S mintmarks.&nbsp; And they have shipped presses to various locations for first striking ceremonies.</p><p><br /></p><p>Planchets</p><p>At one time the mints made all of their own strip and planchets.&nbsp; (although sometimes one mint would ship planchets to another depending on demand and/or surplus capacity.)&nbsp; Today all of the cent planchets come from an outside supplier.&nbsp; Outside suppliers supply strip to the mints for Nickels, dime, quarters and halves but the mints process the strip into planchets themselves.&nbsp; For the dollar coins the suppliers have supplied strip and at other times they have supplied planchets.&nbsp; I do not know what the current arrangement is.&nbsp; 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).</p><p><br /></p><p>Dies</p><p>Until 1997 ALL of the dies for all of the mints were made in Philadelphia and shipped to the different mints.&nbsp; in 1997 Denver opened their own die shop.&nbsp; Now Philadelphia supplies them with a master Hub and they make all of their own dies.&nbsp; All other dies still come from the Philadelphia die shop.&nbsp; In years past when the dies were shipped to the branch mint they DID have the mintmarks already in them.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; I can only think of two times off the top of my head when an unmarked die had a mintmark added and then used.&nbsp; One was the 1854 O Huge O quarter, and the other was the 1870 S three dollar gold.&nbsp; (The one and three dollar dies were unmarked.&nbsp; They added the mintmark to the three because they needed it right away to strike the cornerstone piece.&nbsp; but in the same dispatch to Philadelphia they reported that they had already struck 2000 gold dollars before they noticed they had no mintmark.&nbsp; They wanted to know if they could release them or should they melt them down and await the replacement dollar die?)</p><p><br /></p><p>Another interesting tidbit.&nbsp; In 1956 the government shut down the San Francisco mint and down graded it to just and Assay Office.&nbsp; In 1964 in the midst of a coin shortage they once again began striking business strike pieces but with no mintmarks.&nbsp; Starting in in 1968 they began making proofs and business strikes for circulation.&nbsp; They made business strikes from 1968 to 1974, and again in 79 and 80 with S marks on them.&nbsp; They also made more without marks.&nbsp; But all this time San Francisco was still just an Assay Office.&nbsp; It was not raised back up to Mint status until 1988.&nbsp; So are pieces struck at someplace that ISN&#039;T a mint coins?[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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