Prior to the modern era, coin dies were manufactured individually by hand by artisans known as engravers. In demanding times, such as the crisis of the Roman Empirein the 3rd century, dies were still used even when they

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Medieval engravers were guild members who created coins.
The vast majority of medieval coins were cold struck; the planchetswere not heated. While medieval coin dies

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First, an artist creates a large plaster model of the coin. The plaster model is then coated with rubber. The rubber mold is then used to make an

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On the edge of the US dime, quarter and half dollar, and many world coins there are ridges, similar to knurling, called reeds. Some older US coins, and

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In modern presses, a die strikes approximately 120 coins a minute. This rapid coining causes wear on the dies. Nickel alloys are among the main metals used in today’s coins but they are harder than other legacy coinage metals such as silver and

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The terminal die state, as the name would seem to indicate, is the last state in which any die is used. This is the state of a die that is starting to develop serious structural failures through cracks. A die in such a state would, if not removed from service, become

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During a typical production run, or coining process, (particularly when heavy presses are used for large production runs) a die is selected out of a group of several dies for the front and another die is selected from a different group of dies for the back of the coin to be made. The

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