A mint mark is a letter or group of letters indicating the city, state, or country where a coin was minted. A good reference catalog can help you identify other alphabets, such as Arabic, Chinese, or Cyrillic, and which countries use them.
French inscriptions may be found on French coins and also those from Belgium, Canada, French Guiana, or another French colony or overseas department.Latin inscriptions are common on most older European coins as well, including those from countries whose languages don't derive from Latin, such as Austria, Germany, Hungary, the Netherlands, and Poland.Coins from other British territories may include their colonial names in Latin as well. Irish coins issued during the rules of Kings George III and George IV (1760 to 1830) displayed "Hibernia" (the Latin name for Ireland), as all of Ireland was part of the United Kingdom at that time.Older British coins in contrast, generally display the Latin "Britannia" or some variation of it such as "Britanniar" or "Britanniarum." Coins issued prior to 1953 commemorating the rule of a particular monarch may include "BRITT:OMN:REX," short for the Latin phrase meaning "King (or Queen) of all Britons.".Non-American coins bearing English inscriptions probably were issued by other countries that were formerly British colonies and may be part of the British Commonwealth of Nations, such as Canada or Australia.
They also usually bear the word "Liberty" and the mottoes "E Pluribus Unum" ("out of many, one") and "In God We Trust" (first used in 1863, on all coins since 1938). American coins usually state "United States of America" somewhere on the coin.The inscription, or legend, on a coin can help you identify its country of origin and may also help determine its age if the date is missing. For example, the Lincoln penny bore a pair of wheat ears from 1909 to 1958, then an image of the Lincoln Memorial until 2009, when it was replaced with a shield. This sometimes changes over a period of time separate from the obverse image. Note the image on the reverse (tails) side of the coin as well as the obverse (heads).Consulting a history book or website can help you identify who the ruler was. Most other coins depict an image of the ruler in power over the country or territory for which the coin was issued, either locally or nationally.(The so-called "Mercury" dime issued prior to 1946 is properly called the Winged Liberty Head dime.) Prior to that, most American coins depicted Liberty as a female figure, shown standing, sitting, walking, in bust form, or just her head. Although large cents minted in 1792 depicted George Washington's image, it was with the Lincoln penny in 1909 that American coins began to regularly depict presidents and other statesmen.Being able to recognize the person, animal, or other image depicted on a coin can help you identify its country of origin and give you a clue to its age.
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