A planchet is a round metal disk that is ready to be struck as a

coin A coin is a small, flat (usually depending on the country or value), round piece of metal or plastic used primarily as a medium of exchange or legal tender. They are standardized in weight, and produced in large quantities at a mint in order t ...

. An older word for planchet is flan. They are also referred to as blanks.

History

The preparation of the flan or planchet has varied over the years. In ancient times, the flan was heated before striking because the metal that the

coin die Minting, coining or coinage is the process of manufacturing coins using a kind of stamping, the process used in both hammered coinage and milled coinage. This "stamping" process is different from the method used in cast coinage. A coin die is ...

s were made of was not as hard as dies today, and the dies would have worn faster and broken sooner had the flan not been heated to a high temperature to soften it. An unusual method was used to mint the one-sided, bowl-shaped ''

pfennig The 'pfennig' (; . 'pfennigs' or ; symbol pf or ₰) or penny is a former German coin or note, which was the official currency from the 9th century until the introduction of the euro in 2002. While a valuable coin during the Middle Ages, ...

s'' of the

Holy Roman Empire The Holy Roman Empire was a political entity in Western, Central, and Southern Europe that developed during the Early Middle Ages and continued until its dissolution in 1806 during the Napoleonic Wars. From the accession of Otto I in 962 ...

. The planchet used for these so-called ''

Schüsselpfennig A Schüsselpfennig ("dish ''pfennig''"), also ''Gehulchter Pfennig'' ("hollow ''pfennig''") is so called due to the stamping technique which results in a concave, one-sided type of ''Pfennig'' coin. It was probably first minted in 1374 in the Pal ...

s'' was larger than the coin die itself. The coins were made by striking with only one upper die on the larger planchet. As a result, the perimeter of the planchet was pressed upwards in the shape of a bowl or plate. Until the 18th century they were minted mainly in the

Harz Mountains The Harz () is a highland area in northern Germany. It has the highest elevations for that region, and its rugged terrain extends across parts of Lower Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, and Thuringia. The name ''Harz'' derives from the Middle High German ...

. The curved shape of the pfennig was very useful for handling small change because it was easier to grip than a flat coin.Helmut Kahnt: ''Das große Münzlexikon von A bis Z.'' (2005), p. 249.

Modern striking

Today's dies are made from

hardened steel The term hardened steel is often used for a medium or high carbon steel that has been given heat treatment and then quenching followed by tempering. The quenching results in the formation of metastable martensite, the fraction of which is reduced ...

, and the presses use many thousands of pounds of force to strike coins (varying according to the size of the coin and the complexity and relief of the design). In addition, today's coins have much lower relief than ancient coins. Because of this, the planchet no longer needs to be heated immediately before striking, although it is annealed by heating and slow cooling which softens the coin.

Preparation

Preparation of the modern planchet involves several steps. First, the metal (or metals in the case of clad or multilayered coins) is rolled out into a large roll or sheet of the correct thickness. This process is often done by third parties, not by the

mint MiNT is Now TOS (MiNT) is a free software alternative operating system kernel for the Atari ST system and its successors. It is a multi-tasking alternative to TOS and MagiC. Together with the free system components fVDI device drivers, XaA ...

itself. These flat rolls or sheets of metal are then punched out into round blanks that are a little larger than the coin being struck. The blanks are then subjected to an annealing process that softens the metal through heating to approximately 750 degrees Celsius (1400 degrees

Fahrenheit The Fahrenheit scale () is a temperature scale based on one proposed in 1724 by the physicist Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit (1686–1736). It uses the degree Fahrenheit (symbol: °F) as the unit. Several accounts of how he originally defined hi ...

) and are then slowly air cooled. They are then washed to remove residue from the annealing process and dried.

Completion

Finally, the planchet is struck. After striking, it becomes a coin and is no longer a planchet. Occasionally, a planchet will escape the mint without having been struck. This is a blank planchet error, and is usually worth a few dollars for modern coins. Occasionally, blank planchets can be rare and valuable, such is the case for

Morgan Dollar The Morgan dollar is a United States dollar coin minted from 1878 to 1904, in 1921, and beginning again in 2021. It was the first standard silver dollar minted since the passage of the Coinage Act of 1873, which ended the free coining of silve ...

blank planchets, although authentication and appraisal by a coin grading service is highly recommended for such pieces as they would be fairly easy to counterfeit.

References

External links