Perth Mint vs. Royal Australian Mint

XpipedreamR

I was goofing around on the internet, looking at thier websites. Both seem to be "official" mints. How does that work over there?

Sapyx

The Royal Australian Mint is the only one that actually issues circulating currency.

The Perth Mint is the last remnant of the old Imperial mint system that used to mint sovereigns and Australian coins - Royal Mint branches in Sydney, Melbourne and Perth. The Perth Mint was sold to a semi-government corporation in Western Australia in the 1980's, with the primary purpose of issuing bullion coins and ingots for Goldcorp. Nowadays it operates much like Pobjoy and other fully private mint corporations in that it issues NCLT coins under licence in the name of any country who'll sign a contract with them.

Most collectors of NCLT over here happily collect both, though some purists insist that the Perth Mint isn't "a real mint" because they don't mint "real coins" anymore.

Cruzi

Perth Mint also does gold and silver bullion, both as coins and ingots and its refining business is still strong.
The gold refining business, silver was mostly regarded as a by-product, was the core business for the Perth Mint for many years and is/was an innovator in in this area.
Plate 42C in 1957 being one example.
They buy the platnium and palladium blanks from a Japanese company.
The Perth Mint also is the "Fort Knox" of Australia with a large proportion of Australia's gold held within its depository services.


The RAM no longer has the ability to produce its own metals for coins and indeed most base metal blanks are imported, there was a complicated deal involving melting down large amounts of Aussie coins in the 80's and them supplying blanks, changes in nickel prices since have meant that we have profited nicely ever since.

Do not know where the RAM sources its precious metal blanks from, hoping Perth Mint but you never know these days.

XpipedreamR

Thank you for the info!