The origin and purpose of the mint mark

dan1ecu

Greetings, All --

Does anyone know why there was/is a need to differentiate coins according to where they were produced?

Dan

JasonRox

To make collectors bang their head on tables.

It's either there is a mintmark or variety mark that will be made to indicate which mint produced it. In my opinion, I rather look for mintmarks than little things to figure out where it was produced.

stujoe

I believe that one reason was to identify where the coin was produced for quality control reasons.

Conder101

Back in "Ye Olden Days" transportation was not what it is today, and coin often did not travel quickly from the mint to all areas of a rulers reign. This caused hardship on the subjects. So the rulers would cause multiple mints to be in operation in various parts of their realm. This helped commerce and was a nice political patronage job since people who wanted to run mints usually thought they could become wealthy from the percentage they were allowed to keep. (For that reason they would often PAY the ruler for the privilege.) The problem was that as the ruler you didn't want debasing of the coinage. (Unless the extra money was going into your pocket.) So you made each minter responsible personally for the production of his mint. If it was debased, HE would be punished. But how to tell which mint made a particular coin? Well in some countries they put the coiners name or initials on the coin, sometimes they put the name of the city where it was made. But a city name took up a lot of room so in most cases the mint would be represented by a letter or symbol. This became known as the Mint Mark or Mintmark. Now if a rumour or charge that the coinage from a mint was not of proper weight or fineness, specimens could be gathered from circulation and checked. There was a case of one of the English kings who invited all of the mint masters to a Christmas banquet, and after they all arrived the doors were barred and a chest of coins was brought in. The products of each mint, as identified by the mark, was tested. Those whose coinage was not up to standard, lost their right hand. CHOP!

Today the practice of mintmarks is not as critical and remain mainly due to tradition.

BigE

A chopmark because of a mintmark--------------------BigE

Conder101

Yes, but the chopmark doesn't show on the coin so it doesn't affect the grading.