The Mint Has Such a Long History
With the increase in coin production, some unscrupulous people thought it would be a bright idea to make their own coins and make a buck out of it. The fake coins were made of course at a lower cost, using metals that were of a lower grade or using the same metals but with less weight, probably by using alloys to make them. You might question how they made money out of this, but when they got real coins in exchange, they made money and they did get rich.The government needed to find a way to stop these coins being in accepted as legal tender. They probably knew that getting them out of circulation would be harder. So they had to device a way of making sure people knew the real coins when they saw them.
It was then decided to put a mark on the coins.Ò This didnò€™t seem to be such a bright idea to many people, because they reasoned that the counterfeiters would also go ahead and put the same mark on the coins they were making as soon as they find out what the mark was. They further decided to put a mark that was unique to each mint and thus, the advent of the mint mark. The original ones kept their coins without the mark, which was how to identify them, while the branches used the mintmarks.