Canadian Mint Or US Mint

As I read it, the question is not about which country's coins are better, but which mints produce better products.

In a sense it is difficult to compare. Ideally, if you want to compare the output of two different mints, you have those mints produce the same coins for the same country, so all the technical details of the coins being compared (design, size, composition etc) are the same; the only variable is the mint facility. For the Canadian-American comparison, this hasn't occurred since the 1960s when some Canadian coins were struck in America; at that time, the American products were (in my opinion) superior. However, such a comparison would be impossible to arrange today because American mints don't produce coins for any other country except America anymore.

That being said, in my opinion the Canadian mints currently produce a technically superior product, on average, and have done so since the 1970s - though I think the Americans are catching up again.

In Canada there are two very different mints.

Ottawa produces high-end precious metal collector coins that are superior in every way to anything minted in the states and therefore a comparison is pointless.

Winnipeg uses state of the art plating technology that IMHO is greener and more efficient than US production on a per-coin basis, however there is one major difference in the quality of finished coins: our quarters, loonies and toonies are dumped into a large round metal cauldron (after minting) that stirs and dries them for a few minutes and reduces MS-65's to MS-60's. I think they call this burnishing. I call it ruining circulation coins and collector interest. I couldn't believe what I was seeing on the mint tour. I stood behind the glass and gasped while the rest of the tour moved on. I wish I could take a pic and post it here but they dont allow cameras on the mint tour. It looks a lot like this:


I think our 1 cent, 5 cent and 10 cents skip the burnishing/drying process and go straight to packaging, which would explain why they have those annoying water marks. The higher denoms come out scratched, dinged and with rim dents but happily no water marks.

DVCollector, the Centennial year 1967's animals are my favorites of course!

American coins are hideous, unless you're into historic persons.

No they didn't. Obverse is still Lincoln, reverse is the US shield.

If we're talking business strikes, then RCM's cupro-nickel -> nickel plated steel have always seemed higher quality. The edge (copper/nickel) on the US have always looked to me like someone was trying to pull off a con.

From a collector's standpoint, medal axis (Canada) is better for presentation than coinage axis (US).

It is odd that while the US coins seem like they've never changed, they're actually, on average, newer than ours (1c - 1959, 5c - 1938, 10c - 1946, 25c - 1932)

I agree with the post above that the Canadian 1937 reverses are long past due for a redo. But, I would redo with new artist contests for the same themes (new beaver, Bluenose, and moose). So, both a nod to tradition and something fresh.

I am a collector of both Canadian and US coins. As having been connected to aviation my favorite sets are the Canadian Aviation Series one and Series two. Well done RCM.