Casting Coins?

Question

I'm interested in making my own customized coins - what is the best way to do this?

Answer 1

Called minting - U.S. (and most countries) coins are minted. It requires extreme presures and heavy duty equipment. You can make coins in a mold using pewter and other low temp metals. Try doing a google search on you will find some useful information there.

Answer 2

The Chinese cast coins, or coin type items from 850BC or so up to the late 1890's. They cast the coins into sand molds. The early coins had rims only on one side and blank reverses. You can experiment to see just what you can do. You can use wood or other items as the die to make the impression, then pour in the metal. Lost wax casting is another method. You need to see what is best for you. If you have a machine shop to use, you can make your own dies and do what the Greeks did. Put one die into a vice put the coin blank next, then put the other die into something to hold it on top of the blank and hit it with a hammer. It is very expensive to set up a mint and you must have the talent to engrave the dies. I have a lot of respect for the mint engravers, as well as the artists that make medals.

Answer 3

Great question. I remember trying this with a friend in eighth grade... We set up a sand cast with our own design, consisting of a simple shield with "50" beneath it. We were going to have a whole series of coins, and this first one was to be the "half-whatever" coin in our series.

We found some solder that belonged to my friend's Dad, along with his soldering iron. We melted the solder into the sand cast.

The result was... crude, to say the least. Not only that, we had neglected to reverse the numerals "5" and "0" in our design, so the "coin" came out with something resembling "OZ" instead of "50".

We thereafter referred to the coin as an OZ Cent. We made one more so that each of us would have one, and abandoned the project forever.

I still have mine.

I haven't thought about that for years, but your question made me remember my OZ Cent. I'll probably add a page about it on my website, http://www.valuable-coin-stories.com -- not as a valuable coin, but as a valuable coin story (well, it has value to me, at least.)

Answer 4

sand casting
be careful you don't make a U.S. coin..it is against the law....you can get details in any coin counterfeit detection book...in the past counterfeit trade dollars and gold coins have been cast in this manner

Answer 5

sand cast or waxcast coin,s is the best unless you have the $$$ for it and you can make wax cast and take to local foundrey and have them make mold cast for you