We are all familiar with the US Mint marks of D,S,O,CC and recently P. We are also familiar with those mints. This is a very interesting phenomenon when you consider it. Why did mint marks develop? Around the world, what great mints exist and what are their mint marks on the coinage?
Mint marks have been around since ... uh, ancient times. Here and here for example are Corinthian coins with a Q-like character that could be considered a mint mark. Of course a mint mark does not have to be a character; sometimes you can see a cross, a circle, etc. instead. On early modern coins you will often see the initials of the mintmaster; some countries still use mintmaster initials or symbols today. In Prussia the system of different characters representing different mints was introduced in 1750, and replaced the mintmaster symbols. Today mint marks do not really make much sense. Certainly not in countries that have one mint; but I think they do it for reasons of tradition. Countries with more than one mint (e.g. US, India, Germany) will often continue to use mint marks for "quality control" reasons ... Christian
Mint maks developed so that the coiners could be held accountable if the coins they produced were debased. Coins could be gathered and tested and the mintmarks would identify where the debaseed coins were coming from.
