Ever wondered exactly how coins are made?  What is the actual process?  How does it affect your enamel choices down the line?  What is the actual difference between imitation hard enamel and soft enamel, anyway?

What follows is a short walk through the die-struck minting process.   Note that this process may vary according to who’s actually manufacturing the coins for your vendor, and since (as you’ll see) this can have a really powerful effect on certain plating/translucent color combinations, it’s really important to ask.  Also, these photos refer specifically to the die-striking process -- it’s also possible to make coins using the die-casting process (the die is actually a mould into which molten metal is poured) or the spin-casting process (many wax copies of the coin are made, arranged in a circle with wax piping for fill and drainage, covered over in plaster and then heated to melt the wax, then molten metal is poured into this mold while it is spinning, so that centrifugal force forces the metal into all of the detail).

Okay, with that settled, let’s move on!

Okay, what about color?  As you may know, there are two types of enamel that are generally used for geocoins: soft enamel and imitation hard enamel.  Let’s start with imitation hard enamel, which you see above.

Now, onto soft enamel: soft enamel is more of a liquid and it “slumps”, or sags, into the color-fill areas.  Because it is sagging into the space, it isn’t level or flat, and when you’re looking at a soft enamel coin, it can create some secondary reflections (in other words, the colors do not look totally solid because there’s highlights bouncing off of the edges of the color where it’s sagging).  Some mints use high-quality enamel and this isn’t much of an issue; others are incredibly cheap and the coins look like...well, they look bad. 

Also, look again at the order of steps: with soft enamel, the enamel is applied after the plating.

Why is this important?  Because it depends on the plating.  If you are using soft enamel and want to use a translucent color, and if you specify that that color is to be used in conjunction with an antiqued metal finish (like Antique Gold), your translucent color will be lying on top of a deliberately dulled-down, fairly dark color, and will look like mud.  And if you try to put it on black nickel, forget it.  You won’t even see it.

On the other hand, if you use translucent imitation hard enamels, the enamel is applied before the plating, so it doesn’t matter what plating you choose: the translucent enamel is on top of a fairly bright bronze, and should look good even if you pick something as all-dark as black nickel.

So why would you ever want to use soft enamel?  There are actually several reasons for this:

1. 1.It’s cheaper than IHE...
   

2. 2.Some people like the coin to have a tactile quality to it; IHE coins are completely flat and smooth.
   

3. 3.If you’ve got 3D features that protrude above the top level part of the coin, you have to use soft enamel.  This is because imitation hard enamel has to be stoned/polished down, and the factory won’t be able to do this if there’s a sculpted feature popping up.  The only way to get around it is to ensure, very clearly through your blueprint, that the 3D feature is recessed more deeply so that it doesn’t poke above the top level of the coin (and you’ll have to outline it in order to make sure that enamel doesn’t fill it, unless you want that).
   

Please remember that, as always, your mileage may vary: the mint that your vendor uses might do something completely different, so it’s really important to ask, especially if you’re trying to do something like use translucent enamels with the darker platings.

                                                                                        -- JG