Did you know that the first coins were minted during the 600's B.C. (that's about 2,600 years ago) in Lydia, a country in what is now western Turkey? These coins were bean-shaped lumps of electrum, which is a natural mixture of gold and silver. The coins had a design stamped on them which meant they were guaranteed by the king of Lydia to all have the same value. Otherwise, people would have weighed each coin to decide on its value. Traders took these coins instead of cloth, cattle, gold dust, or other goods.  Other countries thought the coins were a good idea and began to make their own.

Many historians believe that coins were also invented in ancient China and in India at the same time as Lydia. Believe it or not, the Chinese used knives, spades, and other metal tools to trade for goods before using coins. 

Coins today have many of the same features that they had long ago. For example, they have a government approved design stamped on them, just like the coins of ancient Lydia.

A mint is a place where coins are made. The first mint in the United States started producing coins in 1793. It started making cent and half cent coins. The term "cent" means one out of one hundred. Silver coins were made the next year and gold coins the year after that. The gold coins were called eagles. Eagles were produced until 1933. They came in three different values: the $10.00 eagle, $5.00 half eagle, and the $2.50 quarter eagle.  
                                     
Even though America made its own coins, foreign money was still allowed to be used to trade with until 1857. But many people in America didn't like foreign money because there was not an agreed upon value for each coin. It would be very hard to buy something if this were still true!

During the Civil War, people were afraid that they would not be able to exchange their paper money for precious metals. A lot of them saved hundreds and thousands of coins. One person saved so many coins that a house collapsed from all the weight of them! If you have American coins in your pocket, they are from either the U.S. government mint in Denver, Colorado, or Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The mint located in Philadelphia is the largest in the world. It produces not only U.S. coins, but coins for other countries, too. It makes about thirteen billion coins a year.

In the U.S., you can tell where a coin was minted by looking on the head side of the coin. The tiny letter to the right of the face is called the mint mark. It tells you where the coin was minted. If you see a P, that means it was made in Philadelphia. The D stands for Denver. If there is an O or an S, that is because there were once mints in New Orleans and San Francisco.

Coins today aren't make out of gold or silver. They are made from copper and nickel, which is cheaper and more accessible than gold or silver.

To make coins, metal is melted and poured in molds to form bars, or ingots. Machines roll the ingots into sheets. Blanks for each coin size are punched through the sheets. Then they are put through an edge rolling machine, which gives the blanks a raised rim. Lastly, the coin designs are stamped on both sides of the piece at the same time. All United States coins have two sayings engraved on them: "E Pluribus Unum", which is Latin for "Out of many, one," and "In God We Trust." The finished coins are put into machines that automatically count them and drop them into bags which are then shipped off to banks.

Dimes and quarters in the U.S. have ridges along the edges. Do you know why? Because back when coins where made out of silver and gold, the coins did not have ridges so people started shaving the edges off the coins and selling the valuable scraps. To stop people from doing this, ridges were put on the edges.

The United States minted a new one dollar coin in 1979. It had a picture of Susan B. Anthony, who fought for women's rights in the late 1800's. The government thought people would be happy to have a dollar coin. But alas, it roughly matched the size of a quarter and people got confused between the two coins. Millions were minted, but only a small fraction were circulated. 

Now you know all about coins. So next time you hear the jingle of coins in your pocket, think of this.

Citations

Books

Godfrey, Neal S. Kids' Money Book. New York, New York: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 1998.

Electronic Media

Doty, R. G. and Stanley Fischer . "Money." World Book Online Reference Center. 2004. World Book, Inc. <http://www.worldbookonline.com/wb/Article?id=ar367640.> (February, 2004).

Images

Images of bars of gold, house, penny and man from "Microsoft Office Online" <http://office.microsoft.com/clipart/default.aspx?cag=1> Images free for non-profit and personal use. (October-February, 2003-2004). 

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