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Elemetal Mint - Phoenix Rising?

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 Posted 07/08/2021  7:55 pm Show Profile   Bookmark this topic Add HappyHippo to your friends list Get a Link to this Message Number of Subscribers
I collect 1 oz silver buffalo rounds (among other silver and gold).. I have over 100 varieties so far (it's a sickness). Today I found a coin from Liberty Coin on ebay that looks just like the Elemetal design (most notably, radial lines in the background) except it doesn't have the Elemetal mint mark. As some of you might know, Elemetal, Ohio Precious Metals, and NTR all shut down in 2018ish because they were embroiled in a gold / money-laundering scandal. The coin is minted by Cut Saw Mint, in Dallas. Elemetal had a facility in Dallas. It looks like Cut Saw may have bought the equipment that was in the old Elemetal facility. Or is this just a coincidence?

On a related note, is the mint mark on coins a separate operation? Perhaps Cut Saw is using the old Elemetal dies without the mint mark?

Anyone have any more info on this Cut Saw Mint? They have a website but they don't mention Elemetal. Of course, they would want to disassociate themselves with those dark days at Elemetal and its affiliates.

The design with the radial lines is a nice looking variation over the usual silver Buffalo nickel bullion designs.
Edited by HappyHippo
07/08/2021 8:00 pm
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United States
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 Posted 03/30/2022  11:28 am  Show Profile   Bookmark this reply Add tomc to your friends list Get a Link to this Reply
Just to give a bit more information to this. Elemetal was the parent company of the merger between NTR and OPM. NTR was rebranded as Elemetal Direct and OPM as Elemetal Refining. Elemetal had a mint known as Elemetal Mint. After the money laundering case, Elemetal Refining (OPM) shut down but Elemetal Direct (NTR) is still very much alive and kicking (https://elemetal.com/). Cutsaw Mint is just a rebranded Elemetal Mint owned by the same people using the same equipment in the same location.
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 Posted 03/30/2022  7:47 pm  Show Profile   Bookmark this reply Add Sap to your friends list Get a Link to this Reply

Quote:
On a related note, is the mint mark on coins a separate operation?

It's a little late, but since this thread has been given an entirely relevant necro-bump anyway, I might as well answer this.

The answer is "it depends on which mint we're talking about", but for most mints, private and government-owned, usually the answer is "no". Mintmarks are usually added to the design at the master-die stage. For smaller, private mints, they'll usually have only just one die, anyway - the practice of having a chain of "master dies", "sub-master hubs", and "working dies" is really only needed for large high-capacity government mints where mintages are so high that multiple dies are going to be required.

Having mint-marks added as a separate stage of die-making is really only employed in a few specific circumstances: a very large government minting organization, with centralized master-die production but multiple branch-mint locations. The US mint, for example, used to do this, with master dies made mint-mark-less and shipped out to the various branch mints, where the mintmarks were added locally. I believe Germany still does this. The British Royal Mint used to have branch mints all over the world for producing gold sovereigns; mintmarks would be added to the sovereign sub-master dies in London, then the dies shipped out to the colonies.

Applying mintmarks as a separate stage of actually striking the coin is very rare, as this is a laborious process that usually causes more damage and disfigurement to the coin that a mint mark would usually warrant. I can only think of one example where this routinely occurred: Australia has in the past issued "mintmarked" or "privy marked" NCLT dollar coins, where the coins were actually struck in Canberra but the mintmark was applied using a travelling press that travelled around the country to various coin shows and other public events where the specially mintmarked coins would be exclusively sold. But I don't see why a private mint would ever need to do this.
Don't say "infinitely" when you mean "very"; otherwise, you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite. - C. S. Lewis
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