Why are coins generally struck so that the obverse and reverse are inverted?

As in, the top of the obverse mirrors the bottom of the reverse if you flip the coin over.

Pretty much all U.S. coins exhibit this feature - can’t say much regarding world coinage.

Is there a reason that this is common practice?

 

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Interesting for this to come up. I was looking for the thickness of clad layers on the mint website and ran into just this question. Their answer...they don't know. I know that the orientation where the reverse is the same as the obverse is called "medal orientation".

 

One of those questions I've always meant to ask...

 

This could be completely wrong, but years ago I remember hearing that in the early days of the mint, the designs worked better with the faces inverted. As in the metal flowed better into the devices in that orientation.

 

I suspect, but would need someone who specializes in Colonial coinage to verify, that the reason behind US usage of coin orientation was to differentiate our coinage from that of the British empire.

Edit: And of course, there's Kirkuleez's explanation, which makes far more sense.

 

The British have actually changed the orientation of their coins over the years. I picked up a bunch of earlier Victorian shillings today and noticed that the orientation was flipped. Compare this to later coins where it has the medal orientation. So who knows.

 

Both of your theories make a lot of sense.

 

Maybe because they are coins and we call it coin alignment, whereas medals are struck in medallic alignment where the top of the obverse mirrors the top of the reverse. I'm not really sure but maybe your answer lies within the names of the alignment?

 

I think I have heard that before and makes sense.

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The world today does not do it this way. In earlier years, some countries preferred what in the US is called coin alignment while elsewhere "medal" alignment was the preferred one. Today pretty much every country uses the ↑↑ orientation - so you turn a coin just as you turn a note, even a US dollar bill. Whether that alignment has technical or aesthetic reasons, I don't know.

Christian

 

the answer is quite simple, really.. we use coin alignment because when holding a coin between your fingers, its easier to flip it to inspect the reverse with coin alignment than it is with medal alignment....

 

Some countries from time to time like to mix or change their die orientation.

Romania comes to mind if I recall correctly - they had a habit of jumping back and forth. South Korea is also rather unusual - modern coins are struck in coin orientation however commemorative coins are struck in medal orientation (!)

That said, I believe most world coins are struck in medal orientation rather than coin orientation. In fact, I believe I would struggle to name more than 5 countries that still use coin orientation. US, South Korea, Thailand (?) - any more to the list? I could be very wrong.

 

I have an 1864 VG Indian cent with medallic orientation. Don't know whether it has any additional value.

 

well, not really, Its just that we have learned that orientation so we anticipate it. if all we ever saw was medal orientation we would hold and flip coins in a way that works for medal orientation. Its just learned.
We still need the DesertGem or Peter or Dutchman or someone who knows to weigh in on this one. I mean really, why have any orientation at all rather than random? I expect that the answer goes waaaay back much further than US or Colonial coin. But it would be interesting to know why the US mint made this choice.

 

Tradition

 

When I hop in the car, I drive X miles an hour, perhaps to the gas station where I buy gallons of gas, or to the store to buy a few pounds of steak.... the rest of the world can have their alignment, liters of gas or milk, etc, etc... I too don't know for certain why our coins are aligned as they are, but I'm perfectly content with the American way.

 

Well, we have a "US Coins Forum", and we have "Coin Chat" (and a few other forums), and I assumed that, if somebody starts a topic in this forum and does mention "world coinage", the info could be at least peripherally interesting. Switzerland used to be another oddball case by the way - parallel alignment (↑↑) for their low denomination coins up to 20 ct/rp, inverted alignment (↑↓) for the ½ fr and above. In 1982 they went to parallel only. Maybe because the coin sets looked more properly aligned that way?

Christian

 

It is called a rotated die. I should think that may add a little value to some collectors.