I have been hanging around the Lake Tahoe area since Monday, more on that later. One of the many reasons I came here was for the Nevada State museum which is located in the Carson City Mint Building. Today there are only 3 mints in the US, Philadelphia(No Mint Mark), Denver(D) and San Fransisco(S), But in the late 1800’s when Comstock Mine was discovered near Virginia City, the Carson City(CC) mint was built. Running from 1870 to 1893, basically when the Comstock mine went dry, the mint closed. Because of my coin collecting background and my appreciation of the Morgan Dollars I had to come to this museum. They have the actual #1 Coin Press, ‘still’ in operation, for demonstration only.
Now I am not a Museum person, but Nevada State Museum was interesting. The museum had many displays on mining, local history and of course the mint. They had this large actual scale for weighing bullion. Overall very nice day and I did take videos of the press. When the mint closed, the press was moved to Philadelphia to be refurbished and then was transferred to the San Fransisco Mint where it was in operation until 1955 when the State of Nevada bought the press for the museum. The original presses ran on steam, in the early 1900’s they were converted to electricity.
