Award-winning authors Q. David Bowers and Dennis Tucker have written an engaging and fact-filled history of early mints in America, from official colonial coin factories to illegal counterfeiting operations like the mysterious Machin's Mills of New York. Their journey continues into federal coinage with the birth and growth of the Philadelphia Mint, the bureau's impressive main production facility. The branch mints at New Orleans, Charlotte, Dahlonega, San Francisco, Carson City, Denver, and West Point are all studied in detail, with historical photos and scenes from today. Bowers and Tucker shine light on the private mints of 1800s Georgia and North Carolinascenes of the earliest U.S. gold rushesand the private and territorial mints of California, Oregon, Utah, and Coloradothe sources of fascinating gold coins and ingots that circulated in the Wild West. They also take their study overseas, to the Manila Mint in the Philippines, which struck millions of bronze, copper-nickel, and silver coins during U.S. sovereignty.