Mint (facility)

A mint is an industrial facility which manufactures coins that can be used in currency.

The history of mints correlates closely with the history of coins. In the beginning, hammered coinage or cast coinage were the chief means of coin minting, with resulting production runs numbering as little as the hundreds or thousands. In modern mints, coin dies are manufactured in large numbers and planchets are made into milled coins by the billions.

With the mass production of currency, the production cost is weighed when minting coins. For example, it costs the United States Mint much less than 25 cents to make a quarter (a 25 cent coin), and the difference in production cost and face value (called seigniorage) helps fund the minting body.

History

The first minted coins

The earliest metallic money did not consist of coins, but of unminted metal in the form of rings and other ornaments or of weapons, which were used for thousands of years by the Egyptian, Chaldean and Assyrian empires. Metals were well suited to represent wealth, owing to their great intrinsic value and their durability, divisibility and rarity. The best metals for coinage are gold, silver, platinum, copper, tin, nickel, aluminum, zinc, iron, and their alloys; certain alloys of gold, silver, copper and nickel have the best combination of the required qualities.

Coin

A coin is a piece of hard material used primarily as a medium of exchange or legal tender. They are standardized in weight, and produced in large quantities at a mint in order to facilitate trade. They are most often issued by a government.

Coins are usually metal or alloy, or sometimes made of synthetic materials. They are usually disc shaped. Coins made of valuable metal are stored in large quantities as bullion coins. Other coins are used as money in everyday transactions, circulating alongside banknotes. Usually the highest value coin in circulation (i.e. excluding bullion coins) is worth less than the lowest-value note. In the last hundred years, the face value of circulation coins has occasionally been lower than the value of the metal they contain, for example due to inflation. If the difference becomes significant, the issuing authority may decide to withdraw these coins from circulation, or the public may decide to melt the coins down or hoard them (see Gresham's law).

Exceptions to the rule of face value being higher than content value also occur for some bullion coins made of silver or gold (and, rarely, other metals, such as platinum or palladium), intended for collectors or investors in precious metals. Examples of modern gold collector/investor coins include the British sovereign minted by the United Kingdom, the American Gold Eagle minted by the United States, the Canadian Gold Maple Leaf minted by Canada, and the Krugerrand, minted by South Africa. While the Eagle, Maple Leaf, and Sovereign coins have nominal (purely symbolic) face values; the Krugerrand does not.

Coin (department store)

Coin ([koˈiŋ], after the venetian for cohen) is an Italian upmarket department store chain dedicated to the worlds of apparel, home decorations, accessories and beauty. Its headquarters are located in Venezia Mestre.

History

It was established in 1926 in Mirano (Venice), where the first store was opened. In 1962 it opened its flagship store in Milan at Piazza 5 Giornate. Coin was the first retailer to develop a fidelity card program in Italy in 1986.

Coin Group

The Coin Group owns OVS (midmarket apparel department stores) and, since January 2010, UPIM, a midmarket apparel, home and beauty department stores chain previously part of La Rinascente Group.

References

Two pounds (British coin)

The British two pound (£2) coin is a denomination of the pound sterling. Its obverse has featured the profile of Queen Elizabeth II since the coin’s introduction. Two different portraits of the Queen have been used, with the latest design by Jody Clark being introduced in 2015. The reverse features an abstract design symbolising the history of technological achievement. A new reverse design featuring Britannia began to enter circulation during 2015.

The coin was introduced on 15 June 1998 (coins minted 1997) after a review of the United Kingdom's coinage decided that a general-circulation £2 coin was needed. The new bi-metallic design replaced a series of commemorative, uni-metallic coins which were issued between 1986 and 1996 to celebrate special occasions. Although legal tender, these coins have never been common in everyday circulation.

As of March 2014 there were an estimated 417 million £2 coins in circulation with an estimated face value of £831.756 million.

Mint (restaurant)

Mint Restaurant was a Michelin star–winning restaurant located in Ranelagh, Dublin in Ireland. It was owned by the controversial celebrity chef Dylan McGrath. The restaurant was featured in the 2008 RTÉ One fly on the wall documentary The Pressure Cooker, a programme which led to much complaint from McGrath's fellow chefs in the Irish media about his alleged mistreatment of his staff. The closure of Mint Restaurant was publicised in the Evening Herald on 23 April 2009.

Praise

Image magazine has described Mint Restaurant as "a place of worship" and Hot Press has described the venue as a "gastronomic playground".The Sunday Business Post's Ross Golden Bannon reported: "It is a long, long time since a meal actually haunted me in the way a beautiful painting or a thoughtful book might".

Controversy

Mint (candy)

A mint is a food item characterized by the presence of mint flavoring or real mint oil, whether it be peppermint oil, spearmint oil, or another natural or artificial source; the sweets are often referred to as "peppermints." They are usually used to freshen breath. It is possible to obtain these sweets in a sugar-free version. Wintergreen and other oils or flavors are also frequently used in mints; however, these are not of the mint (Mentha) family or botanical group.

Although historically consumed as any other type of candy, mints are especially popular worldwide as after-meal refreshment candies since the taste and smell of mint oil and its active components are quite strong and feel clean and cool to the mouth as well as soothing to the stomach.

Types of mint

Hard mints

Hard mints are hard candies or boiled sweets flavored with mint. Examples of hard mints include starlight mints, also known as pinwheel mints, white, circular, with red rays emitting from the middle; candy canes; humbugs; and brand name mints such as Altoids.

Mint (newspaper)

Mint is India's second largest business newspaper published by HT Media Ltd, the Delhi-based media group which also publishes the Hindustan Times. It mostly targets readers who are business executives and policy makers. It is India's first newspaper to be published in the Berliner format. Mint exclusively carries "WSJ" branded editorial content in its pages by virtue of the content sharing partnership between HT Media and Newscorp, which owns the Journal. The current Editor of the newspaper is Sukumar Ranganathan.

History

Launch

Mint was launched in collaboration with The Wall Street Journal on 1 February 2007, with the Journal's former deputy managing editor, Raju Narisetti as its founding editor. Around eight months before the first edition was published, Narisetti went about hiring and assembling staffers for Mint. Several trial runs of the newspaper, with varying formats and names on its masthead were reportedly tried out before settling with the current ones. The launch team comprised some of India's leading business journalists as well as a handful of staffers from the Journal, whom Raju Narisetti had brought on board with the intention of bringing some Wall Street Journal style and flavour to Indian journalism. Informed observers saw it as a well calculated attack on the near monopoly of The Economic Times, published by The Times Group, HT Media's rival media conglomerate. Within two years of its launch, Mint was second only to The Economic Times and established itself as "India's fastest growing business daily."