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How Are Coins Stamped?

Many people take the change in their pockets for granted. They rarely put any thought into the complex process required to impart the images on the faces of these coins. For large governments that produce billions of coins per year (such as the U.S. government), the process of stamping coins--known as minting--has to be quick and seamless.
  1. U.S. Mints

    • All U.S. coins are made in facilities known as mints, which are controlled by the U.S. Department of the Treasury. All circulating coins are produced at either the Denver, Colorado, mint or the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, mint, although mint facilities exist in San Francisco, California, and West Point, New York, where special collectible coins are minted.

    Dies

    • Once the design of a coin is decided upon, special stamping devices known as dies must be created. An official U.S. mint artist sculpts the coin design out of clay (using a drawing as a reference point), paying special attention to literally raising and lowering sections of the sculpture in order to create a three-dimensional object. This sculpture is then coated in plaster and digitally scanned. The design is checked for any imperfections and then used to program a milling device to create a steel hub with the same relief as a standard coin. This hub is then used to strike a master die, which in turn is used to strike working hubs that are then used to strike the working dies that actually stamp the images onto coins. Coin designs can also be created entirely by using computer software, thus bypassing the need for a sculpture.

    Planchets

    • The large slabs of metal that eventually get turned into coins get sent to a blanking press, which cuts the slabs of metal into small, coin-shaped pieces known as blanks. These blanks are exposed to extremely high temperatures in order to soften them. The softened blanks are then quickly cooled, dried and cleaned. The blanks are sent to a machine that raises the rims of the blanks and adds a reeded edge if required. After all of this processing, the blank has become a planchet, a disk of metal that is ready to be turned into a coin.

    Minting

    • The planchets are then placed in coin presses that are equipped with the proper dies. One die, known as the anvil, holds the coin in place while the other die, known as the hammer, strikes the planchet, thus imparting the images of both dies. Some of these presses can produce up to 750 coins per minute. At this point, the coins are inspected, counted and then either stored for future need or sent out into circulation.


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