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Can people get inside the mint to see how the process of stamping coins works ?
mach19
Posts: 4,901 ✭✭✭✭
Just asking
TIN SOLDIERS & NIXON COMING 
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Link to the Philadelphia Mint:
https://www.usmint.gov/about/tours-and-locations/philadelphia/tour-philadelphia-mint?srsltid=AfmBOopD86kSSuXODC-Tm5hjsIX2dNPajVyPZL5AocKMltPpTWvlBfUW
@mach19 Did you get my PM?
When the Summer ANA Convention is in a US Mint city (Philly, Denver), they used to organize and offer for sale a floor tour of the mint. For example, when the ANA show was in Philly in August 2000, I took a floor tour of the Philadelphia Mint and saw them using the Janvier Reducing Lathe on the 2000 Library of Congress $10 bimetallic coin. This was probably among the last usage of that machine before the engraving department went digital. We also got onto the floor to see the coining presses up close.
Occasionally they used to offer a floor tour during Summer Seminar, but I'm not sure if they do that anymore.
If you want to see a very cool mint museum, go to the Museo Numismatica Nacional in Mexico City. It is highly recommended. (Not to mention you could easily spend a week in that city with all its sights and museums.)
Thank you !
The BEP Ft Worth has tours, but we were elevated above the printing area. My daughter was not impressed saying that it looked like a big Kinko's. I don't know about the U.S. Mint tours.
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https://www.usmint.gov/about/tours-and-locations/philadelphia/tour-philadelphia-mint?srsltid=AfmBOopD86kSSuXODC-Tm5hjsIX2dNPajVyPZL5AocKMltPpTWvlBfUW> @mach19 said:
My pleasure!
but please don't call it stamping. minting, coining, even pressing is better than stamping
K
I did in fact..... Thank you for your support !
Coin production is essentially the same process in any mint in the modern world. Around the world, some mints are better at doing this than others. The Royal Mint in Britain was until very recently quite famous for being a "no visitors allowed" zone, only occasionally letting in VIPs or a Numismatic Society tour.
The Royal Canadian Mint requires a booking for their guided tours, rather than the self-guided tour as seen at the Philly mint. This does mean tours of the RCM are restricted in terms of numbers. I went to Ottawa a couple of years ago and tried to book a Mint tour but they were booked solid for the whole time I was in town.
Here in Australia, the Royal Australian Mint in Canberra is a very visitor-friendly mint, with gallery views over all aspects of coin production, from design and die production to the actual striking of proof and circulation coins. I'm not entirely sure how the workers in the Mint feel about being watched by Joe Public all the time, but I guess it's in their contracts and they seem to be used to it.
Note that a lot of what happens during the actual striking of coins happens inside the "closed box" of the high speed coin presses, and a lot of the other processes are highly automated and self-contained, so there may not be a lot to see in that regard from the viewing platform other than a bunch of big buzzing machines.
Banknote production facilities are generally less visitor-tolerant than coin-producing facilities. This is historically because the governments and corporations that run these facilities don't want to give criminals any hints and tips on how to make more realistic-looking fake money.
Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius, "Meditations"
Apparently I have been awarded the DPOTD twice.
That's awesome my friend !
Thank you !
My first Mint tour was at the Royal Canadian Mint in Ottawa in 1968. I was 17, and our family was on vacation in Canada. When we got to Ottawa Dad wanted to go visit the War Museum, but I said drop me off at the Mint. Just as I walked in the door, somebody announced that the whatever o'clock tour was leaving so I just joined the group and got the floor tour past working machines and past bins of struck and unstruck coins. I resisted the temptation to quietly slip a U.S. coin into a hopper full of blank planchets and just keep walking. Only much later did I learn that you were supposed to register for the tours first. Still have the Dollar coin I bought as we exited through the gift shop.
I took the ANA Summer Seminar as a student in 1976, and the field trip to the Denver Mint allowed us on the working floor past blanking machines, upsetting mills and running coin presses where we were close enough to run our hands through the hopper full of coins that were just struck. No safety glasses or hearing protection, just a general warning to not stick our hands in the coin press. I returned as an Instructor 1979-1984, then left working at the ANA. I later heard that the floor tours ended after a Mint employee brought his wife and children on the floor one time to show them where Daddy worked, and got yelled at. He replied something like "Well, you let those civilians from that coin place come in here." and the floor tours went away.
My last Mint tour was Philadelphia in 2009. They had asked the coin publications to write up the new High Relief $20 re-creation, and I agreed to go for COINage in exchange for a floor tour. Got to see the Engraving Department where they demonstrated how they reverse engineered the old style high relief, and a floor tour where I saw how they re-designed the Dollar coin production line to eliminate the plain edge errors that affected the first few Presidential Dollars, and another machine that eliminated the spotting problem that affected the early Sacagawea dollars.
Got to stand next to one of the new sideways coin presses that was striking several hundred dimes per minute, but the striking area was covered by a rather dirty plexiglass cover and I could not see anything going on inside. I expect that that was the norm in any mint these days, so don't expect to see anything.
I did notice one old-fashioned vertical coin press standing over against an outside wall, so I asked my guide what they used that for. He said that they used it for small press runs, such as Kennedy halves for the Mint sets and for roll and bag sales.
Both Philadelphia and Denver have "catwalk tours" where you can look down at the production floors, but you really can't see anything worthwhile from up there.
TD
All supplies and machinery are now behind glass and it is a catwalk-style tour. Probably for the best given that most of the Ottawa mintage is precious metal coinage not to mention the potential for injury. No pictures allowed on the tour either but it was definitely worth the trip.
chopmarkedtradedollars.com
They were super busy in 1968 striking the new all-nickel 10 Cents and 25 Cents to replace the older 80% silver and 50% silver coinages that were being hoarded out of circulation.
Aren't there online videos of the process?? I've watched lots of stuff where they go through the "stamping" process and all the steps leading up to it.
"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety," --- Benjamin Franklin
Truth be told, at a certain level there isn't all that much to see because of how everything is set up. Spools of metal are turned into sheets from which blanks are punched out, then those are carried to hoppers where they eventually get struck at an incredibly fast speed, and where all the action is hidden from view based on how the machines are made. I've walked the public tour above the Philly Mint many times and have also done the Denver Mint floor tour with the ANA Summer Seminar a little over 20 years ago. In Philly, it's really just watching a machine shop where you can kind of tell they're coins, but you're too far to see details. In Denver, you still don't see the exciting things happening (dies striking blanks) but because you're closer, you can see blanks going in and coins being ejected.
I don't say this to discourage you from going--if you're in either city and can arrange a visit (especially Philly, where it's a free tour open to the public like a museum) it's neat to see, but if you're expecting to really watch how everything happens, I doubt that's very likely just given what machines they use and how they use them. To that end, if you want to see those details, some online videos (particularly of special issues where coins are struck one at a time) will likely show you much more than you'd be able to see on a tour in person.
We visited the RM ten years ago. The tours may have been in their infancy then.
The view of the production floor was limited to a glimpse of the presses through a large window, but there were hands on displays. For a small charge we had the opportunity to strike our own pound coin.
They told us that the Royal Mint was a top level security site. As visitors we weren't overly burdened with security but they had things under tight control.
Half the fun was getting there by train. It is located in a tiny little town in Wales.
You will have to find the Mint first.
Then you need to find an open door...
All comments reflect the opinion of the author, even when irrefutably accurate.
My daughter's family visited the Philly Mint last week and all they could do was a self-guided tour/ They enjoyed it, but were disappointed that they could not see more.
USN & USAF retired 1971-1993
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Honestly, as long as he's not saying printing, he's doing great.
https://learn.apmex.com/learning-guide/science/what-is-the-minting-process/
All comments reflect the opinion of the author, even when irrefutably accurate.
@airplanenut said: done the Denver Mint floor tour with the ANA Summer Seminar a little over 20 years ago
Jeremy, this is hard for me to wrap my head around. I still remember you as a high school student on a bus trip returning home and passing a few miles away from where I lived. Man, how time flies!!
"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety," --- Benjamin Franklin
Thank you !
You're welcome.
All comments reflect the opinion of the author, even when irrefutably accurate.
FTFY
chopmarkedtradedollars.com
Did i say something wrong
No one talks about how the large coils are made. I would imagine more of the process was done in house back then compared to today.
Yeah, high school was... a while ago. So was college
I had just finished my first year of college when Neil Armstrong walked on the Moon.
When I taught at West Point, the head of our department said organizing a visit to the West Point Mint had to have a valid academic/research reason and that it was a lot of paperwork. We never went. I passed by it frequently leaving out the back gate.
Shouldn't that be "your 'e welcome !" - if we're going to go all the way.> @Acarroll said:
No. Just pointing out that people do use the word "stamping".
All comments reflect the opinion of the author, even when irrefutably accurate.
Life is too short , deep down inside you people know what folks are saying .
I'm an old man ,
give it a rest man !
FTFY
It won't make any difference, but I say this without intending any sarcasm or rancor. Hopefully, you'll take it in that spirit. One is never too old to learn or to improve oneself.
Often, we don't know what you're saying and, when attempting to get clarification, you seem to not even know what you intended.
Speaking for myself, I don't jump down everyone's throat over an occasional typo or grammatical slip-up. But when it occurs in every single post, and the issues prevent meaningful discussion, it means you're either typing poorly on purpose, or you care so little about being able to convey your thoughts to the rest of the community that it becomes disrespectful.
Add to that your frequent posts that aren't really designed for conversation or information, but are essentially just Google queries that could easily be answered by yourself. And then there's your total unwillingness or inability to even acknowledge any of these issues, much less try to correct them.
So, some of us take that whole package and decide that making a joke or teasing is the best way to approach such a recalcitrant poster. If you enjoy posting however you like without regard for others, so be it. Most people here will just ignore it and live and let live.
Others of us, myself included, may lean more toward the viewpoint that if someone has chosen to post however they like after 20+ years on the board, then it is fair game for us to also post however we like within the rules of the forum .
chopmarkedtradedollars.com
If he actually did walk on the moon.
the negativity coming from the responses is off-putting. the laxness is not. the negativity and bickering is running people off and getting them to post less -- even the non-lax ones.
I am going to accept 80% of the blame for this, but I got to tell you, I have no idea what you are attempting to state.
100%
Why would you bother !
Nuffin better to do ?
Get a life !!!!!!!!!
I am going to accept 10% of the blame for this, but I got to tell you, I have no idea what you are attempting to state.
@mach19
I asked Aspie to include a couple of mint write ups (with video also) of the minting and die process in the Resources thread. They are down the list somewhat under 'Actual vs PMD / and Coin Production'.
Copied the links below.
https://www.usmint.gov/learn/production-process/die-making
https://www.usmint.gov/learn/production-process/coin-production
https://youtube.com/watch?v=OwZlYz2V4AM Sophie Lloyd, guitar shred cover Paranoid (Black Sabbath)
https://youtube.com/watch?v=fbEW8BrNctI Haley Reinhart, Don't Know How To Love You Live (direct to record)
RLJ 1958 - 2023
I am sure there are Youtube videos that will show more than you will be able to see in person. In fact I recall a US Mint video a few years ago showed pretty detailed production for some special silver coin. I just don't remember which one.
There you go thinking again !
Get a grip brother !
A fine example of the snarky comments that are turning this forum into crap.
I don't know what amuses me more, calling it "stamping" or when "blank" is used instead of planchet.
"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety," --- Benjamin Franklin
Your scolding is disappointing.
And here I thought the "turning this forum into crap" was caused by all the veiled political posts you and others have made.
F
U
N
RIP
All comments reflect the opinion of the author, even when irrefutably accurate.