Monetary Workshop

What is a Monetary Workshop?

A mint is the place where coins are made. The buildings where coins are made are usually located in a large city. Not all mints produced the same number of coins, so some are rarer than others. The same type of coin, depending on where it was made, can be of greater or lesser value and interest to collectors.

A letter for every monetary workshop

The traceability of their issues was ensured by a mark engraved on the coins, such as a letter. The mint letter indicates themint from which the coin originated, from which city, and is almost always placed on the reverse.
Beware, however, that the same mint letter can sometimes indicate different mints, so it's by the date on the coin that a numismatist will determine its origin and therefore its value.
Twenty-eight mints were used for French coins in the ^19th and ^20th centuries.

Letter from a French monetary workshop after 1789

Workshop letter	City of l'Atelier	Photos of the Letter	Period
A	Paris		Year 4 to 1898
AA	Metz		Year 5 to Year 8
B	Rouen		Year 5 to 1846 and from 1853 to 1857
BB	Strasbourg		Year 5 to 1870
C	Castelsarrasin		In 1914 and from 1943 to 1946
D	Lyon		Year 5 to 1840 and from 1848 to 1858
H	La Rochelle		Year 12 to 1835
I	Limoges		Year 4 to 1835
K	Bordeaux		Year 4 to 1857, from 1861 to 1867, from 1870 to 1878
L	Bayonne		Year 4 to 1835
M	Toulouse		Year 12 to 1836
N	Montpellier
MA	Marseille		Year 9 to 1839 and from 1853 to 1857
Q	Perpignan		Year 5 to 1835
R	Orleans		Year 5
T	Nantes		From Year 4 to 1820 and from 1826 to 1835
W	Lille		From Year 4 to 1846 and from 1853 to 1857

Other letters from money workshops