The Mint Has Such a Long History


by Peter Gitundu - Date: 2008-10-13 - Word Count: 294 Share This!

Before there were mintmarks and mints designed to make money for multiple countries, each country boasted its own mint. As the countries got richer and amassed more wealth, more mints sprang up to support the main ones and these were known as branch mints. Of course because of this, more and more coins were produced to supplement those already in circulation.

With the increase in coin production, some unscrupulous people thought it would be a bright idea to make their own coins and make a buck out of it. The fake coins were made of course at a lower cost, using metals that were of a lower grade or using the same metals but with less weight, probably by using alloys to make them. You might question how they made money out of this, but when they got real coins in exchange, they made money and they did get rich.

The government needed to find a way to stop these coins being in accepted as legal tender. They probably knew that getting them out of circulation would be harder. So they had to device a way of making sure people knew the real coins when they saw them.

It was then decided to put a mark on the coins.  This didn't seem to be such a bright idea to many people, because they reasoned that the counterfeiters would also go ahead and put the same mark on the coins they were making as soon as they find out what the mark was. They further decided to put a mark that was unique to each mint and thus, the advent of the mint mark. The original ones kept their coins without the mark, which was how to identify them, while the branches used the mintmarks.


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Peter Gitundu Researches And Reports On Coins. For More Information On Mint, Visit His Site At MINT

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