The United States Mint primarily produces circulating coinage for the United States to conduct its trade and commerce. The main Mint facility is located in Washington, D.C., and branch facilities are located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Denver, Colorado; San Francisco, California; and West Point, New York.

The Mint was created by Congress with the Coinage Act of 1792, and placed within the Department of State. Per the terms of the Coinage Act, the first Mint building was located in Philadelphia, then the U.S. capital. It was the first building of the Republic raised under the Constitution.

The Mint's first director was renowned scientist David Rittenhouse. The position is currently held by Edmund C. Moy. Henry Voigt was the first Superintendent and Chief Coiner, and is credited with some of the first U.S. coin designs. Another important position at the Mint is that of Chief Engraver, which has been held by such men as Frank Gasparro, William Barber, Charles E. Barber, James B. Longacre, Christian Gobrecht and Anthony C. Paquet, among others.

The Mint was made an independent agency in 1799, and under the Coinage Act of 1873, became part of the Department of the Treasury. It was placed under the auspices of the Treasurer of the United States in 1981.

History

The Mint has operated several branch facilities throughout the United States since the Philadelphia Mint opened in 1792 in a building named "Ye Olde Mint". With the opening of branch mints came the need for mint marks, an identifying feature on the coin to show its facility of origin. The first of these branch mints were the Charlotte, North Carolina (1838–1861), Dahlonega, Georgia (1838–1861), and New Orleans, Louisiana (1838–1909) branches. Both the Charlotte (C mint mark) and Dahlonega (D mint mark) Mints were opened to facilitate the conversion of local gold deposits into coinage, and minted only gold coins. The Civil War closed both these facilities permanently. The New Orleans Mint (O mint mark) closed at the beginning of the Civil War (1861) and did not re-open until the end of Reconstruction in 1879. During its two stints as a minting facility, it produced both gold and silver coinage in eleven different denominations, though only ten denominations were ever minted there at one time (in 1851 silver three-cent pieces, half dimes, dimes, quarters, half dollars, and gold dollars, Quarter Eagle, half eagles, eagles, and double eagles).

A new branch facility was opened in Carson City, Nevada in 1870; it operated until 1893, with a four-year hiatus from 1885 to 1889. Like the Charlotte and Dahlonega branches, the Carson City Mint (CC mint mark) was opened to take advantage of local precious metal deposits, in this case, a large vein of silver. Though gold coins were also produced there, no base metal coins were.

A branch of the U.S. mint (Manila Mint) was established in 1920 in Manila in the Philippines, which was then a U.S. colony. To date, the Manila Mint is the only US mint established outside of the Continental U.S. and was responsible for producing coins for the colony (one, five, ten, twenty and fifty centavo denominations). This branch was in production from 1920 to 1922, and then again from 1925 through 1941 (until the outbreak of World War II). Coins struck by this mint bear either the M mintmark (for Manila) or none at all, similar to the Philadelphia mint at the time.

Current facilities

Philadelphia

The Mint's largest facility is the Philadelphia Mint, one of four active coin-producing mints. The current facility at Philadelphia, which opened in 1969, is the fourth Philadelphia Mint. The first was built in 1792, when Philadelphia was still the U.S. capital, and began operation in 1793. Until 1980, coins minted at Philadelphia bore no mint mark, with the exceptions of the Susan B. Anthony dollar and the wartime Jefferson nickel. In 1980, the P mint mark was added to all U.S. coinage except the cent. Until 1968, the Philadelphia Mint was responsible for nearly all official proof coinage. Philadelphia is also the site of master die production for U.S. coinage, and the engraving and design departments of the Mint are also located there.

Denver

The Denver branch began life in 1863 as the local assay office, just five years after gold was discovered in the area. By the turn of the century, the office was bringing in over $5 million in annual gold and silver deposits, and in 1906, the Mint opened its new Denver branch. Denver uses a D mint mark and strikes coinage only for circulation, although it did strike along with three other mints the $10 gold 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Commemorative. It also produces its own working dies, as well as working dies for the other Mints.

San Francisco

The San Francisco branch, opened in 1854 to serve the goldfields of the California Gold Rush, uses an S mint mark. It quickly outgrew its first building and moved into a new facility in 1874. This building, one of the few that survived the great earthquake of 1906, served until 1937, when the present facility was opened. It was closed in 1955, then reopened a decade later during the coin shortage of the mid-60s. In 1968, it took over most proof-coinage production from Philadelphia, and since 1975, it has been used solely for proof coinage, with the exception of the Anthony dollar and a portion of the mintage of cents in the early 1980s. (These cents are indistinguishable from those minted at Philadelphia.)

West Point

The West Point branch is the newest branch mint. Its predecessor, the West Point Bullion Depository, was opened in 1937, and cents were produced there from 1973 to 1986. The West Point Mint gained official status as a branch mint on March 31, 1988. Along with the cents already mentioned, which were identical to those produced at Philadelphia, West Point has struck a great deal of commemorative and proof coinage bearing the W mint mark. In 1996, West Point produced clad dimes, but for collectors, not for circulation. The West Point facility is still used for storage of part of the United States' gold bullion reserves, and West Point is now the United States' only production facility for gold, silver and platinum American Eagle coins.

Fort Knox

While not a coin production facility, the U.S. Bullion Depository at Fort Knox, Kentucky is another facility of the Mint. Its primary purpose is for storage of the United States and other countries' gold and silver bullion reserves.

Functions

Mint manages extensive commercial marketing programs. The product line includes special coin sets for collectors, national medals, American Eagle gold, silver and platinum bullion coins, and commemorative coins marking national events such as the Bicentennial of the Constitution. The Mint's functions include:

• Producing domestic, bullion and foreign coins;
• Manufacturing and selling national commemorative medals;
• Designing and producing the congressional gold medals;
• Designing, producing, and marketing special coinage;
• Manufacturing and selling proof and uncirculated coin sets and other numismatic items;
• Safeguarding and controlling the movement of bullion;
• Disbursing gold and silver for authorized purposes;
• Distributing coins from the various mints to Federal Reserve Banks.

Note that the Mint is not responsible for the production of paper money; that is the responsibility of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing.

In 2000, the Mint was responsible for the production of 28 billion coins. See United States Mint coin production for annual production values of each coin.

Responsible for protection of Mint facilities, employees and reserves is the United States Mint Police, a federal law enforcement agency.

Mintmarks

With the exception of a brief period in 1838 and 1839, all coins minted at U.S. branch mints prior to 1909 displayed that branch's mintmark on their reverse. Larger denominations of gold and silver coins were labeled with the Dahlonega, Charlotte, and New Orleans mintmarks (D, C, and O, respectively) on the obverse (just above the dates) in those two years. Carson City, which served as a U.S. branch mint from 1870 to 1893, produced coins with a CC mintmark.

Between 1965 and 1967, as the Mint labored to replace the silver coinage with base metal coins, mintmarks were temporarily dispensed with (including on the penny and nickel) in order to discourage the hoarding of coins by numismatists. Mintmarks were moved to the obverse of the nickel, dime, quarter, and half dollar in 1968, and have appeared on the obverse of the dollar coin since its re-introduction in 1971.

• Cent: Unlike all other coins, which had their mintmarks on the reverse until 1964, the Lincoln cent has always had its mintmark on the obverse below the date to the right of Lincoln's bust since its 1909 introduction.

• Nickel: The mintmark was located near the rim of the obverse side, clockwise from the date from 1968 to 2005, to the right of Thomas Jefferson's bust. The redesigned obverse of the nickel which appeared starting in 2006 has its mintmark below the date on the lower right. Many earlier nickels from 1938 to 1964 are still in circulation, and their mintmarks can be found on the reverse to the right of Monticello, with the exception of the 1942-1945 war nickels cited elsewhere in this article.

• Dime: The mintmark is above the date on the obverse side to the right of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's bust.

• Quarter dollar: The mintmark is to the right of George Washington's bust.

• Half dollar: The mintmark is below the center of John F. Kennedy's bust, above the date.

• Eisenhower Dollar (1971-1978): The mintmark is below the center of Dwight D. Eisenhower's bust, above the date.

• Susan B. Anthony dollar (1979-1981, 1999): The mintmark is found to the right of Susan B. Anthony's bust.

• Sacagawea dollar (2000-2008): The mintmark is just below the date. In 2009 the date, mintmark and E pluribus unum were moved to the rim of the coin.

• Presidential dollar, first issued in 2007: The mintmark and date are found on the rim of the coin.

Due to a shortage of nickel during World War II, the composition of the five-cent coin was changed to include silver. To mark this change, nickels minted in Philadelphia (which had featured no mintmarks until then) displayed a P in the field above the dome of Monticello. Nickels from San Francisco were minted in the same fashion, and Denver nickels reflected the change in 1943. This new mintmark location continued until 1946, when the nickel returned to its pre-war composition.

The P mintmark, discontinued after the war, reappeared in 1979 on the Anthony dollar. By 1982, it had appeared on every other regular-issue coin except the cent, which still bears no P mintmark. The circulating cents struck in the 1980s at San Francisco (except proofs) and West Point also bear no mintmark, as their facilities were used to supplement Philadelphia's production.Given the limited numbers produced at each facility, they might have been hoarded as collectibles.

See also

• United States commemorative coin
• Early United States commemorative coins
• Modern United States commemorative coins
• Bureau of Engraving and Printing

External links

• U.S. Mint website