Originally Mint marks were developed help find any problems with a particular coin.  Should the coin be under or overweight the mint mark would be able to show where the coin was originally from and therefore the problem could be fixed. During the 1800's coins were usually collected by date sets not mint marks.

The collecting of coins via their mint marks started around 1893 which was when A.G Heaton's "A Treatise on Coinage of the United States Branch Mints" was published. Heaton gave many examples of the scarcity of mint marked coins bringing high returns. After the United States of America stopped making silver coins in 1964 the new coins, which were made of a mixture of copper and nickel, had the mint marks removed because it was thought that this would help stop the coins being taken from circulation by coin collectors. The silver coins quickly disappeared from circulation and fearing that there would be a serious shortage of the new coins, the reintroduction of mint marks in the USA began again in 1968.

It is interesting to note that although many countries used the initial letter of the country for the mint marks as in Ottawa (C), Pretoria (S.A) and Bombay (I) and other countries used the initial letter from the city's name such as used in Australia for Sydney, Melbourne and Perth; the exception being in the case of London where there was no mint mark at all. Not all countries followed this rule, for example, Germany used the letter A for Berlin, D for Munich. Also many mints used a Privy Mark such as the maple leaf for the Royal Canadian Mint.

Sovereign Gold Coin Mints

	South Africa Mint Following the discovery of large gold deposits in the local area, the South African Pretoria Mint was opened in January 1923 and stayed in production until 1932
	Canada Mint Canadian gold sovereign coins started to be minted during Edward VII reign on January 2nd in 1908 at the Ottawa Mint, Canada, gold having been recently discovered
	Australia Mint Gold sovereigns started to be minted in Australia during the year 1871 with the opening of the Sydney Mint
	British Mint The London Mint first started producing coins in 886 during the reign of Alfred the Great. It moved to the Tower of London by 1279 and for the next 500 years produced the coins of the realm
	Indian Mint  The Indian Mint in Bombay (Mumbai) dates from 1672 and has produced coins for the East India Company and other administrations right up to the present day