Ive been wondering... why do governments date coins?

[Gabe]

So, why have governments dated coins? This practice has been done from the Roman times, and most (if not all ) of the coins minted by established governments today date their coins with the date their were minted in. What is the purpose of this?

[gription]

fair question...



anyone....?

[Steven]

Accountability?

Steven

[coop]

I guess if the governments didn't want you to save them as a series, it would make sense to not put dates on them. But because they do put dates and mintmarks, they do want people to collect them. If they didn't make commeratives/proof coins/mint sets/special mint sets, then it would be fair to say that they didn't want people to collect their coins. So as it is, the U.S. mint wants people collect coins. As for other countries I don't know. But most of them also use dates. In England they re-called all the coinage from this date (1967) and issued new money to use as they changed their monitary system. They had 30 days to exchange or it became void. But not all coins were turned in. In Mexico there were era's where they coins of those years were no longer valuable because the treasury being looted. So years of coins do serve a purpose to show if coins are still valid. Cataloging coins usually involves checking dates. So there are a lot of plus and minus of using coins with dates. I'm sure others can relate more on this subject.

[Steven]

Found these articles Interesting.

http://www.joelscoins.com/dates.htm

http://oldmoney.vassar.edu/papers/description.html