A mint is an industrial facility which manufactures coins that can be used as currency.
The history of mints correlates closely with the history of coins. In the beginning, hammered coinage or cast coinage were the chief means of coin minting, with resulting production runs numbering as little as the hundreds or thousands. In modern mints, coin dies are manufactured in large numbers and planchets are made into milled coins by the billions.
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Byzantine currency, money used in the Eastern Roman Empire after the fall of the West, consisted of mainly two types of coins: gold solidi and hyperpyra and a variety of clearly valued bronze coins. By the 15th century, the currency was issued only in debased silver stavrata and minor copper coins with no gold issue. The Byzantine Empire established and operated several mints throughout its history. Aside from the main metropolitan mint in the capital, Constantinople, a varying number of provincial mints were also established in other urban centres, especially during the 6th century.
Most provincial mints except for Syracuse were closed or lost to Arab Muslim invasions in the Mediterranean Region by the mid-7th century onwards. After the loss of Syracuse in 878, Constantinople became the sole mint for gold and silver coinage until the late 11th century, when major provincial mints began to re-appear. Many mints, both imperial and, as the Byzantine Empire fragmented, belonging to autonomous local rulers, were operated in the 12th to 14th centuries. Constantinople and Trebizond, capital of the independent Empire of Trebizond (1204–1461), survived until the invasion of Anatolia by the Ottoman Turks in the mid-15th century.
The English penny (plural "pence"), originally a coin of 1.3 to 1.5 grams (0.042 to 0.048 troy ounces; 0.046 to 0.053 ounces) pure silver, was introduced c. 785 by King Offa of Mercia. These coins were similar in size and weight to the continental deniers of the period and to the Anglo-Saxon sceats which had preceded it.
Throughout the period of the Kingdom of England, from its beginnings in the 9th century, the penny was produced in silver. Pennies of the same nominal value, 1⁄240 of a pound sterling, were in circulation continuously until the creation of the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1707.
In numismatics, an overstrike describes a situation in which an existing coin rather than a blank is struck with a new design. This practice is now obsolete and generally occurred for two purposes. Overstriking was sometimes done for technical reasons when a first strike is unsatisfactory, or accidentally if the blank slips out of place or if the dies judder, resulting in a slight doubling of the design. However, sometimes old or worn coins were overstruck with new designs by later rulers or foreign states.
In the ancient world, use of overstrikes was not uncommon, since the manufacture of flans was resource consumptive; thus a foreign or outdated coin could be overstruck with less investment than new mintage. Evidence of overstriking appears as early as about 500 BC when coins of Aegina were overstruck by the ancient city of Kydonia on Crete. In this case and many others, the overstrike can be a valuable aid to dating an ancient coin, an era when dates were not commonly affixed to the design.
Minting, coining or coinage is the process of manufacturing coins using a kind of stamping, the process used in both hammered coinage and milled coinage. This "stamping" process is different from the method used in cast coinage.
A coin die (archaically spelt dye) is one of the two metallic pieces that are used to strike a coin, one per each side of the coin. A die contains an inverse version of the image to be struck on the coin. Striking a coin refers to pressing an image into the blank metal disc, or planchet, and is a term descended from the days when the dies were struck with hammers to deform the metal into the image of the dies.
The dollar coin is a United States coin with a face value of one United States dollar. Dollar coins have been minted in the United States in gold, silver, and base metal versions. Dollar coins were first minted in the United States in 1794.
Dollar coins have almost never been popular in circulation since their inception. Despite efforts by the U.S. government to promote their use to save the cost of printing one dollar bills, the Anthony Dollar, the Sacagawea Dollar and the Presidential Dollar Series are all seldom seen in circulation, since most Americans prefer to use the dollar bill. For this reason, since December 11, 2011, the Mint has not produced dollar coins for general circulation, and all dollar coins produced after that date have been specifically for collectors. These collector coins can be ordered directly from the Mint, while pre-2012 circulation dollars can be obtained from most U.S. banks.
Swissmint is the official mint of the Swiss Confederation. Located in the Swiss federal city Bern, it is responsible for manufacturing Swiss franc coins, both of the currency and bullion variety. Apart from making coins for the government, Swissmint also manufactures medals and commemorative coins for private customers.
Siderokausia (Greek: Σιδηροκαύσια; Ottoman Turkish: ﺳﻴﺪر َﻩ ﻗﺴﯽ, romanized: Sidrekapsi), was a silver and gold mine active in the Byzantine and Ottoman periods, located in the northeastern Chalkidiki peninsula in northern Greece. The settlements of the region are known to this day as Mademochoria (Μαντεμοχώρια, "mine villages"). In the Ottoman period, a coin mint was attached to the mine.
Hari Singh Nalwa (29 April 1791 – 30 April 1837) was the commander-in-chief of the Sikh Khalsa Fauj, the army of the Sikh Empire. He is known for his role in the conquests of Kasur, Sialkot, Attock, Multan, Kashmir, Peshawar and Jamrud. Hari Singh Nalwa was responsible for expanding the frontier of Sikh Empire to beyond the Indus River right up to the mouth of the Khyber Pass. At the time of his death, Jamrud constituted the western boundary of the Empire.
He served as governor of Kashmir, Peshawar and Hazara. He established a mint on behalf of the Sikh Empire to facilitate revenue collection in Kashmir and Peshawar.