Foreign Mints Vs US Mint Differences.

1. Coins with holes in them usually have the hole punched at the planchet-making stage. A regular planchet is made by punching a small disc out of a sheet of metal. To make a holed planchet, you simply punch out two disks, first the smaller one, then the bigger one. Yes, this does mean that sometimes, the hole is punched "off-centre".

2. Bimetallic coins are usually made from pre-assembled blanks. The two separate pieces of the blank - the core and the ring - are loosely pushed together; there's a ridge-and-groove at the join, which smashes tight when the coin proper is struck under pressure.

3. The collars for scalloped and polygonal coins are that shape. The blanks are usually punched out to be that shape too, which does add some complication to the striking process.

4. The upsetting machine turns a "blank" into a "planchet" by adding a raised rim. The mint might have one of these, or might purchase planchets that are already upset (see answer to #5).

5. These days, most mints don't make their own blanks or planchets; they import them from a specialist planchet manufacturer. Poongsan Corporation in South Korea is the largest provider of such blanks (the Royal Australian Mint gets all its circulation coin blanks from South Korea).

6. Most mints still have the old Janvier reducing machines, that take plaster models and reduce them down to a master hub. Most mints also have CAD-based computer software to directly control the cutting of master hubs or master dies.

You've probably already seen the YouTube videos on how the US mint makes coins, but the other major world mints also make such videos. Some of those videos are a little light on detail - they are all competing with each other for foreign mint contracts, so may not want to let slip any trade secrets in publicly available videos! Here are some of the largest mints in the English-speaking world:

Royal Australian Mint:

Royal Canadian Mint:

Royal Mint, Great Britain:

South African Mint: