JULY 15
1920•America's Only Overseas Mint Opens in Manila
1980•American Arts Gold Medallions
America's Only Overseas Branch Mint Opens in Manila
On July 15, 1920, the United States opened a branch mint in Manila in the Philippine Islands—the first and only U.S. branch mint ever established outside the continental United States. Governor-General Francis Burton Harrison struck the first coin during the opening ceremony, a bronze one-centavo piece, while Philippine House Speaker Sergio Osmeña struck the first commemorative opening medal. The Manila Mint transformed a former Spanish colonial mint into an American-operated coinage facility and began a remarkable two-decade chapter in which U.S.-controlled coinage was manufactured thousands of miles from the mainland.
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A United States Mint Thousands of Miles From the Mainland
When Americans think of historic branch mints, names such as Carson City, New Orleans, Charlotte, Dahlonega, Denver, and San Francisco usually come to mind.
Manila belongs on that list—but with an extraordinary distinction.
It was the only United States branch mint established outside the continental limits of the country.
The facility stood in the Philippine Islands, which had passed from Spanish to American control after the Spanish-American War.
On July 15, 1920, it formally opened under United States authority.
A contemporary account published the following year called it the first colonial mint of the United States and described its opening as a new departure in American mint procedure.
The historical evidence for July 15 is unusually direct.
Gilbert S. Perez's 1921 account, The Mint of the Philippine Islands, states that the first colonial mint of the United States opened at Manila on July 15, 1920.
Modern specialist research agrees.
The formal opening took place on a Thursday morning.
Governor-General Francis Burton Harrison participated in the ceremony and operated the press for the first coin.
That coin was a bronze one-centavo piece.
The moment linked American territorial administration, Philippine government, and numismatic history in a single strike.
The First Coin: One Centavo
The choice of a one-centavo coin was appropriate for the new facility.
It was a basic circulating denomination intended for everyday use throughout the islands.
The coin belonged to the distinctive U.S.-Philippine monetary system created during American administration.
Its obverse showed a Filipino youth seated beside an anvil, holding a hammer, with the smoking volcano Mount Mayon in the background. The design symbolized labor and the natural landscape of the Philippines.
The reverse carried the arms of the United States and the inscription UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.
In one small bronze coin, the political relationship of the period was visible: Philippine imagery on one side and American sovereignty on the other.
Francis Burton Harrison had served as Governor-General of the Philippines since 1913.
His administration was associated with a policy of increasing Filipino participation in government.
That broader political context mattered to the Mint project.
The contemporary Manila Mint account cited economy, faster delivery, and the government's policy of helping Filipinos participate in the management of domestic affairs as reasons for establishing the facility.
Having Harrison strike the first coin therefore carried both ceremonial and political meaning.
The machinery was American, the islands remained under U.S. sovereignty, but the facility was being integrated into Philippine administration and staffed locally.
The ceremony produced more than the first circulating coin.
Sergio Osmeña, then Speaker of the Philippine House of Representatives and one of the most important Filipino political leaders of his generation, struck the first commemorative medal.
The medal celebrated the opening of the Mint and has become famous among collectors as the Manila Mint Opening medal or “Wilson Dollar.”
The nickname comes from its portrait of U.S. President Woodrow Wilson and its approximate silver-dollar size.
It was not a circulating dollar and should not be confused with legal-tender coinage.
The Manila Mint Opening medal is one of the most recognizable numismatic artifacts connected with the facility.
Its obverse features President Woodrow Wilson.
The reverse presents an allegorical scene commemorating the opening of the Mint, including a coin press and the date 1920.
Examples were produced in copper, silver, and gold.
Contemporary accounts indicate that thousands of medals were struck, and specialist research records approximately 2,200 silver and 3,700 copper pieces, with gold examples far rarer.
Because of its size and appearance, collectors later grouped it among so-called dollars even though it had no monetary denomination.
Why Was There a U.S. Mint in the Philippines?
The answer begins with war and empire.
The Spanish-American War of 1898 ended Spain's centuries-long colonial rule over the Philippines.
Under the Treaty of Paris, Spain ceded the islands to the United States.
The transfer led to a complicated and often violent period of American colonial rule, including the Philippine-American War.
By the early twentieth century, the United States was administering the islands and restructuring their monetary system.
Coinage became one visible expression of that new political order.
Congress authorized a distinctive coinage for the Philippine Islands during the early years of American administration.
Beginning in 1903, coins were struck in the United States for use in the Philippines.
Philadelphia and San Francisco handled much of the production.
The designs intentionally expressed two ideas at once: the coins belonged to the Philippine monetary system, but the islands were under United States sovereignty.
That dual identity makes U.S.-Philippine coinage a fascinating category for modern collectors.
Shipping coins across the Pacific was inefficient.
The Philippines needed a steady supply of circulating money, and producing it locally promised several advantages.
The contemporary account identified expediency and economy as important considerations.
Local production could also provide quicker deliveries.
Instead of waiting for coins to be struck in Philadelphia or San Francisco and transported by ship, the government could manufacture them where they were needed.
The policy also created technical and administrative work for Filipinos.
The project took a major step forward in 1918.
On February 8, the Philippine legislature passed a bill appropriating 100,000 pesos for machinery for a new mint.
Governor-General Harrison signed the measure eight days later.
The machinery was not simply purchased off the shelf.
It was designed and constructed in Philadelphia under the supervision of Clifford Hewitt, chief engineer of the United States Mint.
This created a direct technical connection between the established American mint system and the new facility in Manila.
The Machinery Crosses the World
By June 1919, the equipment had been assembled and tested in the United States.
It was then disassembled or prepared for shipment and sent to the Philippine Islands through the Panama Canal.
The machinery arrived in Manila in November 1919.
Hewitt traveled to supervise installation and train Filipino employees.
The project therefore involved more than moving metal presses.
Knowledge had to travel with them.
Workers needed training in die handling, press operation, quality control, maintenance, counting, and the many routines required to run a mint reliably.
Manila already possessed a long coinage history before the American facility opened.
Spain had operated a mint there during the nineteenth century.
The American-era institution therefore did not introduce coin making to Manila for the first time.
Instead, it revived and transformed a local minting tradition under a new government and monetary system.
This layered history—Spanish, American, and later independent Philippine—makes Manila one of the most historically complex mint cities associated with United States coinage.
Coins struck at Manila are famous for their M mintmark.
Collectors sometimes overlook them because they are not standard U.S. denominations such as cents, nickels, dimes, quarters, halves, and dollars intended for mainland circulation.
Yet the M represented a United States branch mint during the American territorial period.
Regular Philippine denominations struck there included the centavo, five centavos, ten centavos, twenty centavos, and fifty centavos at various times.
The Mint also produced special commemorative coinage and money for the Culion leper colony.
An interesting complication is that the earliest Manila-struck coins did not all display a mintmark.
The first 1920 issues were produced without the familiar M.
Later Manila coinage adopted the mintmark, making attribution much easier.
This means collectors cannot assume that the absence of an M automatically proves a Philippine coin was struck in Philadelphia or San Francisco.
Date, denomination, and production records all matter.
During 1920, the new Mint produced several denominations for circulation.
Its output demonstrated that the facility was more than a ceremonial project.
The machinery installed under Hewitt's supervision was capable of handling the everyday coinage requirements of the islands.
The Mint would continue operating during the 1920s and 1930s, though production was not continuous in every year.
Its products circulated through a rapidly changing Philippines during the final decades of American rule.
The Culion Leper Colony Coinage
Among the Manila Mint's strangest products was special money for the Culion leper colony.
At the time, officials feared that ordinary money handled by people with Hansen's disease could spread infection.
Special coins were therefore created for use inside the colony.
The medical premise reflected the limited scientific understanding and social stigma of the era, but the resulting coinage became a unique chapter in numismatic history.
The first Culion coins had been privately made in Manila in 1913.
In 1920, the newly opened government mint took over production.
The 1920 Culion issue included 10-centavo, 20-centavo, and one-peso pieces struck in aluminum.
The coins bore health-service imagery and inscriptions identifying the Culion Leper Colony and Philippine Islands.
They were intentionally separated from ordinary government money.
People entering and leaving the colony could be required to exchange between normal currency and the special local issue.
The aluminum proved poorly suited to the environment and to the harsh disinfecting procedures used on the coins.
Later Culion issues changed composition.
The Culion issues demonstrate the extraordinary range of Manila Mint production.
The facility did not merely make pocket change.
It produced regular circulation coins, commemorative pieces, medals, and specialized institutional money.
Few United States branch mints can claim such a diverse mission.
For collectors today, that diversity makes a complete Manila Mint type set a challenging and historically rich project.
In 1935, the political status of the Philippines changed with the establishment of the Commonwealth of the Philippines.
Coin designs changed accordingly.
The old territorial reverse identifying United States authority gave way to the Commonwealth arms on later issues while the relationship with the United States remained visible.
Manila continued producing coinage through this transitional era.
The coins therefore document political evolution directly in metal.
Commemoratives From Manila
The Mint also produced important Philippine commemorative coins.
Among the best known are the 1936 issues marking the establishment of the Commonwealth and honoring figures including Manuel L. Quezon, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Frank Murphy.
These coins occupy an unusual place between U.S. and Philippine numismatics.
They were issued during American sovereignty but celebrated the Philippines' movement toward self-government and eventual independence.
The Manila Mint's story took a catastrophic turn during World War II.
Japanese forces invaded the Philippines after the attack on Pearl Harbor.
American-controlled mint operations ended in 1941.
During the occupation, the facility passed under Japanese control.
The building was ultimately destroyed during the battle to retake Manila in 1945.
The physical home of America's only overseas branch mint did not survive the war.
Philippine coinage continued to be produced at U.S. mints during the war years, but Manila never resumed its role as an American branch mint.
On July 4, 1946, the Philippines became an independent republic.
The political system that had created the U.S. Manila Mint was over.
The facility's active American history therefore fits almost entirely between two world wars.
The Manila Mint cannot be understood solely as a technical achievement.
It was also an institution of American colonial rule.
The coins themselves display that political reality.
Philippine imagery and denominations existed alongside explicit symbols of United States sovereignty.
At the same time, the Mint employed and trained Filipino personnel and was established partly under a policy of increasing local administrative participation.
Its history therefore contains both technological cooperation and the unequal political relationship of colonial government.
American collectors often organize U.S. coins by familiar mainland denominations and mints.
That structure can leave U.S.-Philippine issues outside the standard narrative.
Yet Manila was part of the American minting system.
Its machinery was designed under U.S. Mint supervision. Its opening was a government ceremony. Its coins were produced under United States sovereignty.
Ignoring Manila leaves out the only time the United States operated a branch mint overseas.
The First Centavo as a Historical Object
The bronze centavo struck by Harrison during the ceremony is more than a first coin.
It represents the beginning of local production after years of shipping Philippine coinage across the Pacific.
It marks the transfer of minting technology and technical expertise from Philadelphia to Manila.
And it embodies the complicated political identity of the islands in 1920.
Few first strikes carry so many layers of meaning.
Exactly sixty years later, July 15 again became a notable date in United States Mint history.
On July 15, 1980, the Treasury Department began offering the first American Arts Gold Medallions for sale through U.S. post offices nationwide.
The inaugural honorees were painter Grant Wood on the one-ounce medallion and singer Marian Anderson on the half-ounce medallion.
The program had been authorized by legislation signed in 1978 and was planned as a five-year series honoring ten American artists.
The American Arts pieces were deliberately medallions rather than legal-tender coins.
They carried no monetary denomination.
The 1980 pieces were 90 percent gold and 10 percent copper.
The Mint produced 500,000 one-ounce Grant Wood medallions and one million half-ounce Marian Anderson medallions, though only a fraction of those quantities ultimately sold.
The program is an important predecessor to later U.S. government precious-metal products, particularly the American Eagle bullion coin era that began in 1986.
On July 15, the geography of the United States mint system changed.
For the first—and ultimately only—time, an official U.S. branch mint began operating outside the continental United States.
Governor-General Francis Burton Harrison struck a bronze one-centavo coin to inaugurate production. Sergio Osmeña struck the first commemorative opening medal. Filipino employees, trained with machinery designed and tested in Philadelphia, began producing money locally for the islands.
Over the next two decades, the Manila Mint would manufacture ordinary circulation coins, commemoratives, medals, and the extraordinary Culion colony issues.
War would eventually destroy the building, and Philippine independence would close the American chapter permanently.
But the coins survived.
Every Manila Mint piece is evidence of a remarkable and complicated period when the United States operated a branch mint on the other side of the Pacific.
That era began on July 15, 1920.
ALSO ON THIS DAY
1980 — American Arts Gold Medallions — Treasury began offering American Arts Gold Medallions to the public by mail order through U.S. post offices.