The Importance of Mint Marks
If you take a close look at the coins in your collection, you may notice some very tiny letters or shapes included in the design. These are known as Mint Marks, small markings or letters that are included to help identify where it was minted, or which organisation produced it.
The use of mint marks, as with so many things we still use today, can be traced back to the Ancient Greeks. They used mint marks, or ‘Magistrate’s Marks’, to help identify the source of a problem; if a coin or coins were found to be underweight, or even overweight, the mint mark would help trace where the mistake was made so that changes could be made to correct it.
They can also be used to differentiate between different sources; for example in the 19th Century, The Royal Mint had branch mints in a number of locations around the world, all of which struck Sovereigns. The mint mark helped traders and, later, collectors to identify where a particular Sovereign had been made.
Nowadays they are mainly used as a mark of assurance, a guarantee of a coin’s provenance and a symbol of its authority and authenticity.
