Everyone knows that the mint is where money gets made, but what else goes on behind those fortress-like walls? Quite a bit, it turns out.
Philadelphia, Denver and San Francisco Mints
Job One, of course, is making coins, but of the six active mint locations, the coins we use in everyday commerce are currently made at only two—Philadelphia and Denver. The San Francisco mint, dating back to 1854 and the California gold rush, suspended producing circulating coinage from 1955 to 1968 and stopped their routine production altogether in 1974. Since then, San Francisco has been used mostly for proof coinage, although Susan B. Anthony dollars were made there from 1979-1981, and some one-cent coins in the early ‘80s, but those coins didn’t bear the familiar “S” mint mark; they were unmarked like most of the coins minted in Philadelphia.
West Point Mint
Gold, silver and platinum proof and uncirculated coins are minted in West Point, New York as bullion coins of those metals. West Point was built in 1937 as a storage facility for silver bullion, earning it the nickname of “The Fort Knox of Silver.” It became a mint in 1973, producing cents until 1986 and began striking gold medallions in 1980. Besides silver, roughly $28 billion worth of gold is stored there, second only to Ft. Knox in Kentucky.
Design, Engraving, Master and Working Dies
The design and engraving departments of the mint are at the Philadelphia facility, and when new coin designs are approved, prototypes are made there, too. That’s where the master dies for coins are also made.
Besides circulation coinage with the familiar “D” mint mark, the Denver mint makes the working dies for all the mints from the Philadelphia masters. A (relatively) small bullion depository is also there.
Public Tours Available
Philadelphia and Denver are currently the only mints offering public tours (by reservation only), and each has a gift shop. If you can’t make it to Denver or Philadelphia for a tour and want to see how coins are made, you can see the process online on the Mint’s How Coins Are Made page of its website.
Other U.S. Mint Facilities and Paper Money Production
The two other U.S. Mint facilities are its headquarters in Washington, D.C., and the bullion depository at Fr. Knox, neither of which produce coins. Paper money, by the way, isn’t made by the U.S. Mint. That’s done at the Bureau of Engraving and Printing in Washington, D.C. and since 1990 in Ft. Worth, Texas. They’re also the folks who used to print postage stamps until that function was turned over to private printers in 2005.