November 13, 2012 – The upcoming MintWorld Compendium will be dedicated to ‘Innovations.’ Of these the last ten, twenty years have seen quite a lot. Please write us which innovations you consider most important. And if you have the feeling something is missing on the list, please feel free to drop a line. We will include a little bit of information on your favorites within the upcoming MintWorld Compendium.
If you wish to contribute to the chart, please send us an email. Simply write the number of the innovation you consider important. You may mention up to five innovations. Naturally you are free to comment on any of them or to give us further hints. And in case we forgot an innovation, just name it. I would be glad to hear from you!
1. Innovations regarding the production of circulation coins
1.1 New coin metals and alloys
1.2 Bi-metallic coins
1.3 Multi-layer materials
1.4 Coloured coins
1.5 Security features on circulation coins like e.g. latent images.
2. Innovations regarding the production of commemorative coins and medals
2.1 Coloured coins
2.2 New coin metals and alloys
2.3 Bi-metallic and tri-metallic coins
2.3 Special shapes of the blank
2.4 Holograms
2.5 Coins with non-metal objects embedded
2.6 Direct transfer of digital images to the blanks
2.7 Nano-technology
2.8 ‘Functional coins,’ which describes coins provided with additional features
2.9 Preserving silver coins from tarnishing
2.10 Individual identification of each single coin of an issue
3. Technical innovations regarding the production
3.1 High end minting machines
3.2 Quality management based on a systematical statistical procedure by recording the measured data
3.3 Automatization of packaging
3.4 Changeover from manual to automated inserting and ejection of commemorative coins
4. Design and die engraving
4.1 Graphic applications permitting the coin design to be created directly at the computer
4.2 Direct transfer of the design made with a computer directly to the die via laser technology and eroding procedure
5. Environmental technology
5.1 Special wastewater purification processes, which reduce the environmental impacts enormously
6. Customer retention
6.1 Direct marketing via internet
6.2 Personalized customer support
6.3 Including customers in the process of coin designing
6.3 Social media