The Royal Mint Experience

Last year marked 50 years since The Royal Mint moved to Llantrisant, a small town in south Wales to the north-west of Cardiff, and two years since its visitor experience opened its doors.

The Royal Mint Experience consists of a 45-minute guided tour, which includes a look inside the factory where the coins are minted, after which you’re free to wander around the museum at your own pace.

Our tour began with a brief introductory video about the Mint, before we followed our guide into the factory where he explained how they mint the coins and showed us some of the rarest coins currently in circulation in the UK.

We were then taken into a room, where from behind a glass screen, we could see the factory floor and watch the coin production process in action.

I hadn’t realised that The Royal Mint produces some five billion coins each year, minting coins not only for the UK, but for countries all over the world.

Only £2, 50p and 10p pieces have unusual, collectable designs on them. The rarest 50p piece features the pagoda from Kew Gardens – only 20 per cent of the coins are still in circulation because the other 80 per cent have been kept by coin collectors.

The guided tour was fascinating, I learned a lot and it made me realise how little I knew about the coins I handle on a daily basis, and how much work and thought goes into producing them.

Our guide was extremely knowledgeable and did an excellent job explaining the production process.

There were a couple of serious coin collectors on our tour who asked the guide some tricky questions, but he answered them with ease.

After completing our factory tour, we were free to walk around the experience’s museum and I spent ages looking at everything.

The museum featured displays about the Mint’s history, from its origins in the Tower of London to its later homes on Tower Hill and at Llantrisant.

There were lots of very rare coins on display, too, including an elusive 1933 penny (only six or seven were made), the first coin minted at the Llantrisant site, as well as coins from the reign of Elizabeth I and Sir Isaac Newton’s seal (he was master of The Royal Mint for almost 30 years until his death in 1727).

The Royal Mint makes coins, medals and blanks (the pieces of metal minted into coins) for lots of countries, including the Philippines, Costa Rica and Jordan, and there was an informative display about the many countries the Mint has worked with over the years.

Other interesting displays included a section that explored the design process in detail (I learned that some coin designers choose to have their initials engraved on the coin, which I hadn’t noticed before), a section featuring a series of fascinating facts about coins and another that looked at the medals the Mint has manufactured over the years.

The Royal Mint made all the medals for the 2012 London Olympics (below) and the museum lets you handle replicas of them.

It turns out that the Olympic gold medals are much heavier than the bronze and silver ones, with the silver medal also weighing more than the bronze.

All in all, we spent a good two hours at The Royal Mint Experience and I thoroughly enjoyed our visit.

I came away armed with so many facts about coins that I bored my family and friends stupid with my new found knowledge. I also made a mental note to start checking my change from now on.

Tips

We visited the Mint bright and early on a Wednesday morning because between 10am and 2pm each Wednesday, you can swap a 10p piece for one of The Great Coin Hunt Quintessentially British A-Z 10p pieces.

It’s a collectable series of coins that feature a different letter of the alphabet on the one side and a design linked to something intrinsically British (for example, M is represented by a Mackintosh raincoat and B by James Bond) on the other.

So if you’re interested in picking up a collectable coin during your visit – Wednesday’s the best day to do so.

Info

The Royal Mint Experience, Pontyclun CF72 8YT
Open from 9.30am every day
Adults £13.50, children (5-15 years) £11, children under five are free, senior citizens £12
royalmint.com/the-royal-mint-experience