How do we ever know where our coins were minted?

[gxseries]

This question has provoked me for a long time, although seems to be quite useless, but makes me wonder.

 

How do we know where our coins are made, where our planchets were produced, where they were striked, etc. Remember not all countries have the natural resources, finance, and the ability to strike coins.

 

Some of the interesting facts that I remembered are as following: (I can be TERRIBLY wrong!)

 

The highly terrible mistake Israeli gold coins minted by the Dutch mint

Finland minting bimetal 10 bahts for Thailand

Singapore used to mint palladium coins for Bermuda

St. Petersburg minting coins for Taijkistan

etc

 

But how can we ever know what world coins were produced by what mint especially when they don't have mintmarks?

[jlueke]

I'm sure it varies from country to country. You'd think most governments or mint would have kept records since they would need to spend the state's money for any coining endevours.

[tabbs]

Don't know to what extent such information is publicly available. But as Jorg wrote, the government that ordered the coins, and the mint that made them, should know.

 

In some cases we do hear about which mint won what contract, especially if there is a competition or call for tenders. Rahapaja (Finland) makes the Slovenian euro coins for example, Monnaie de Paris (France) produced new coins for Afghanistan ... Such stories are even covered by the press to some extent.

 

Then, coin catalogs will usually say where a country's coins were made. Sometimes there are more or less subtle hints on the coins, like the little E, F or S letters on the 2002 Greek coins. Luxembourg's euro coins have been made in Germany, Poland, Finland the Netherlands, but only the latter two used mint "indicators". The British Royal Mint made some of the Dutch and Irish euro coins (no marks), and the Mayer Mint and the Monnaie de Paris produced some of the Irish collector coins, again with no marks.

 

Now where the planchets come from, that will be (even) more difficult to find out. Those things you usually read about only if there is a shortage or production flaw.

 

Christian

[gxseries]

Ironically, I only noticed it when I get a chance to see some world commemorative coins that comes together with the certificates. Quite often, the certificates are generous to tell you which mint striked the coins. But to compile a list of what coins were minted in what mint could lead to some massive research. I am not too sure if Krause mentions this on modern commemorative coinages.

[tabbs]

The Schön catalogs mention that but (1) they are in German, and (2) I am sure they do not cover all cases either. As you wrote, researching such data would be a tremendous amount of work while most (?) coin collectors, ie. those who such catalogs are aimed at, do not consider this to be very important information. Even the annual reports of the mints are not very helpful in that regard. Here are two examples, from the Royal Mint (UK, 2005) and Rahapaja (Finland, 2004).

 

Page 11 of the annual report (that is page 13 of the PDF file) mentions some examples of the British Royal Mint's international production, but is far from being a detailed list:

http://www.royalmint.com/RoyalMint/web/FILES/ar200405.pdf

 

The Mint of Finland Group also has some annual reports online. The latest one available is here:

http://www.mint.fi/en/documents/939/RP_YEAR04_ENG_final.pdf

 

It also mentions productions for other countries but does not really go into details either ...

 

Christian

[Daniel]

The Royal Canadian Mint in Winnipeg does many different country's coins. At the original location in Ottawa, there is a display of something like 15-20 countries whose coins were minted by the RCM, but they say they cannot reveal most contracts. In those cases, the country does not want the information released, for what ever reason.