What would you do with a 100-kilo (99.999% pure) gold bullion coin twith a $1 million face value? Lock it up in a vault? Perhaps, set it up in a prime spot in your mansion? A Dubai businessman uses it as a coffee table. With the rising price of this yellow metal, his coffee table is now worth $7 million dollars. Let’s go back to the time when the Royal Canadian Mint’s refinery was the first to produce 5 nine gold (more pure than 24-carat gold). Believed to be the purest in the world, “to brag,” Cassandra—our guide at the mint in Ottawa—tells us, “in 2007, we made five such million-dollar coins of 5 nine gold, each weighing 220 pounds (100 kg). The first coin is locked away in a vault, while the other four were sold for $2.6 million each—two to anonymous buyers, another to the owner of a mining company in Western Canada (who lends it to different museums, making it the only one on display) and the last to the Dubai businessman mentioned above.

COMMERCIAL BREAK
SCROLL TO CONTINUE READING

Their feat got the Royal Canadian Mint a prized place in the Guinness Book of World Records for the largest and purest coin. However, Australia actually made a 1,000-kilo coin, but with 4 nine gold, and so, it is the Canadian mint that still boasts of producing the much purer coin. In addition, in 2011, the mint also issued a 10-kilo 99999-pure gold collector coin with a $1,00,000 face value, featuring an ultra-high relief design of a West Coast native art sculpture. No more than 15 of these exclusive coins were crafted for collectors of both fine art and the finest gold in the world.

Minting stories

​​The facade of the Royal Canadian Mint

Apart from producing million-dollar coins, the Royal Canadian Mint, which opened in 1908 (initially as the Royal Mint under British power), makes three types of coins—circulation coins (everyday money) at their Winnipeg location, as well as collectors’ and investment coins at the Ottawa mint. As we walk through the corridors of the mint in Ottawa, Cassandra tells us how the coins are minted, “The collectors’ coins, available for sale at the boutique, are mainly bought for the images on them. Investment or bullion coins, on the other hand, are distributed by the mint to banks and then bought from the banks for their weight”.

Coined into being

Giving us the example of creating a silver coin, Cassandra explains that ingots (72-pound pure silver blocks) sent from the refinery are sliced and melted in a furnace that is heated to 1,250°Celsius. Next, long molten strips of the metal are cooled off using cold water and then turned into coils, each weighing around 1,000 pounds and worth around $3,00,000 (each gold coil is worth around $20 million dollars). “The silver is still too thick to make a coin,” says Cassandra adding further, “so we heat the silver again to soften it and then thin it out by applying 65 tons of force on both sides. Once it’s thinned out, we punch our blank coins, which have no images and can be in any shape—circles, stars, hearts, triangles, squares, rectangles, even maple-leaf shaped.”

The perfect blank

Much like cookie cutters, the blanks are stamped out and the leftover silver is sent back to the furnace. A rim is added for grip, to help the visually challenged identify coins and to protect the image. Post this stage, investment coins then go to MARTY (Material Recovery Technology) to be weighed. “If a coin is more than 31.13 gm, MARTY, using the laser built into it, will slowly shave off bits until the precise weight is reached. “As we recycle the shavings, MARTY saves us a $1,00,000 a week,” she shares.

A lasting image

Coins  painted with the Canada flag

Now, it’s time to add the images to the investment coins in the automatic press room. The blanks from MARTY travel up a conveyor belt and fall into a machine—one at a time. Inside the machine, it’s struck once—Queen on one side, maple leaf on the other—and it’s out. The images on collectors’ coins are struck in the manual press room, where workers load the blank into the machine and it is struck four to six times to ensure that the image is clear. Flawless coins are put in black or orange boxes, whereas faulty coins are placed in a red box and sent back to the furnace. Every single coin in the ‘approved’ boxes is then rechecked by around eight more people. If there’s any doubt, the coins are sent back to the furnace.

The finishing touch

In 2000, the Royal Canadian Mint, created its first coloured coin—a 25-cent piece celebrating the new millennium, which was sold in limited numbers as a collector coin. In 2004, the mint issued a Poppy 25-cent coloured circulation coin to commemorate the tradition of Remembrance for Canada’s veterans and fallen heroes, claiming to be the world’s first coloured circulation coin. Since then, the mint has also been creating coloured coins, ones that glow-in-the-dark as well as coins with holograms and crystals. 

That’s not all

The reverse of the 2000 Millennium 25 cent pride coloured coin

The medals for the Montreal 1976 and Vancouver 2010 Paralympics and Olympics were also created at the mint. In addition, military medals, such as the Victoria Cross, which is awarded for conspicuous bravery, acts of valour, and/or self sacrifice, or devotion to duty in presence of the enemy—are also made here.

As we exit, Cassandra reminds us to try lifting a 28-pound gold bar worth  more than $7,00,000, before we leave the mint. Heavy is an understatement!