Visit to the throne room: excursion to the Mint of Finland

Yesterday we got a chance to visit the Mint of Finland and actually
see how the coins we use everyday are being produced. The visit
started with a quick presentations by our hosts Tuomas and Henna. The
Mint of Finland is a nordic company which history goes all the way to
995 which is more than one thousand years behind - quite old, huh? In
Finland the production of coins started in 1860 when Alexander II gave
the finns their own money.

The visit itself was very educating and entertaining. It's really
surprising what the guys and girls at Mint can do! If you want a
special coin for yourself they can do everything from the scratch to
the final product and they will do it well. It will probably cost you
a lot, if they find room from the production line in the first place:
the Mint of Finland produced more than 1 billion coins last year so
you can imagine that they have their hands full of coins already.

The making of coins is all about precision. All the details and
markings need to be just right otherwise the coin has a good chance of
failing the quality checks. In circulation coins there can perhaps be
small dots or markings in them but, believe us when we say, the
collector coins are all carefully checked through. The people checking
those coins were so good on spotting possible faults that our
untrained eyes were totally unable to spot any mistakes in the coins
that failed the Q.C.

The security there was one thing that our eyes were able to catch
though. You wouldn't want to try to get in just by yourself and they
were quite strict on photographs also - that's why you won't be able
to see here all the details we were shown. During the visit we were
able to see some really secret stuff also but our mouths are totally
shut by the promise of secrecy, so no need for asking. All this makes
a perfect sense - after all they are making money over there!

Got interested in the coin making? Visit the Mint of Finland's web
page for more information on just about anything related to coins and
making of them. The link can be found on the sidebar at the right side
of this blog. Also feel free to comment to this post at anytime and by
doing so perhaps send some questions to the people at Mint as they
will be watching us closely ;)

-Jani