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Message:: [QUOTE="kaparthy, post: 1801948, member: 57463"]The question assumed that a "country" had the first perfectly round coins. In fact, it was the private Soho Mint that invented the coining press collar and the first customers were merchants needing tokens for small change.  <a href="http://sohomint.info/drozcollar.html" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://sohomint.info/drozcollar.html" rel="nofollow">See Soho Mint website here.</a>  (See also, "The Birmingham Button Makers" by George Selgin for the complete history of Matthew Boulton and James Watt's Soho Mint.)  1790.  That is why the "Provincial tokens" (merchant tokens; "Conder" tokens) of the 1790s had edge inscriptions and were perfectly round. Also, as Conder101 noted the US Mint adopted similar tools about 50 years later, for the strikings of 1828-1829.  However, I found a Google Books Link (books.google.com/books?id=RAwpAAAAYAAJ) for a "Mechanics Magazine" from 1825 that describes the closed collar coining press.  So, this was common technology when the Mint adopted it. And, just to check, the Decus et Tutamen crowns of Charles II were edged first "by a secret process" and those planchets then delivered to the Mint for striking by machinery, though without a collar. All of that being as it may, I am still digging because I think that some French engineer developed a similar technique earlier...[/QUOTE]