The United States Mint

The Coinage Act of April 2, 1792, created the Mint, defined the dollar, and put the new government in the business of making money in the most literal sense. The first mint, in Philadelphia, was the first federal building erected under the Constitution, and David Rittenhouse, the astronomer, was its first director. For most of the nineteenth century the Mint was an independent agency reporting to the President. It moved into the Treasury Department in 1873 and has been a Treasury bureau since.

The Mint produces every circulating coin in the United States at two facilities, Philadelphia and Denver, which between them strike several billion coins a year, the exact number rising and falling with demand from banks. San Francisco and West Point make proof and collector coins and the gold, silver, and platinum bullion coins sold to investors, including the American Eagle series. The Mint also makes the nation's medals, including the Congressional Gold Medal, and it operates the United States Bullion Depository at Fort Knox, Kentucky, where roughly half of the Treasury's gold reserves are stored.

The Mint does not decide how many coins the economy needs. The Federal Reserve orders coins and pays the Mint face value for them, and the difference between face value and production cost, called seigniorage, is profit returned to the Treasury. On quarters and dimes that profit is substantial. On the penny and the nickel it has run the other way for years: each one-cent coin cost more than three cents to produce by 2024. In 2025 the Treasury moved to end penny production, a step long urged by economists and resisted by tradition and by businesses that round prices.

The Director of the Mint is appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate for a five-year term. The bureau employs about 1,600 people and, unusually for a federal agency, funds itself from its own revenue through the United States Mint Public Enterprise Fund rather than annual appropriations. Its coin designs, which change with commemorative programs and the state and national park quarter series, are among the few federal products that nearly every American handles daily.