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.

Mint

Mint may refer to:

Biology

Flavour

Coins

Places

Organisations

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.