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Hi everyone, I visited the Royal Mint experience yesterday... it was a long day trip for me (from near Southampton). It was a good tour and the exhibition was really interesting, although similar in parts to the sort of things you see in the British Museum. This was aimed more at the general public so everything was explained nice and clearly. It was more popular than I expected, with coach trips and families providing a varied audience. I hadn't expected the preparation stages of the blanks and dies to be so interesting... never really thought about how the lettering, milling and fusing of bimetallic coins was done. Not all at the same time! Also surprising that all the coin presses were German machines... You don't get to see the whole process in action, just the striking and counting/packaging area. Our guide explained that the mint is required to have tens of millions of pounds worth of coins in stock, but they don't get paid for them until they're issued. She said that the mint makes no profit from UK circulating coinage... all their income comes from foreign countries and collectables, which explains the panoply of commemoratives and precious metal releases. Some disappointments... I couldn't find much to buy in the gift shop, even though I wanted to. I thought there would be more coin themed items like lapel badges and keyrings, maybe with a tasteful Britannia or George and dragon design. Most of the gifts were related to the current commemorative themes... Beatrix Potter, world wars and royal anniversaries. And when you did buy something (a box of fudge in the end) there were no new pound coins for your change. Ironically, they were almost out of change :/ Still, I did strike my own pound coin... it's a 2017 BU coin which I think will be the same as the circulating one in due course, so maybe that could have been a little more special. It does look practically perfect under the magnifier though... and just £7.50. I'm glad I went... mostly because it's something you just couldn't do until recently. Not sure I'd go again... and I'm still pretty sure I'm not really interested in most of the things they sell. They did have some cardboard albums for people to collect coin designs from change... if this becomes popular they could offer coins to fill in gaps in those collections, although I hate to think what they would charge! Back to checking my change... Mark

Nice one Mike, I saw that one on line , its the scarcer type which I discovered with the P in PENNY rotated left to point at the tooth. Almost all Rev. Freeman G coins have the P pointing to the gap Terry