Back in my early days of collecting coins, as a teenager, I lived in Sweden. So naturally, I collected Swedish coins. Now, coins have been struck in Sweden for about one thousand years, so there is a bit to choose from if you decide to collect them. Well, actually coin production in medieval times was quite small and irregular -- it seems from found coin hoards that in those days the circulating coins were rarely struck in Sweden.It was in the early 1500s that the production of coins in my native country picked up momentum, during the reign of a very powerful and long-lived monarch called Gustav Vasa.
Now, if you take any coin struck during the time of that king, or any time thereafter, you will always find some reference to the ruler somewhere on that coin. (Sweden is still formally a Monarchy, by the way.) On the larger and more prestigious coins there will be the king's portrait, of course. And the lesser coins will display things like the king's name, or initials.
As a budding coin collector, I learned that the side of a coin featuring any such symbol of the ruler would be considered the front side -- in numismatic terms, the "obverse". A portrait carried the most weight, followed by other symbols in a precisely defined sequence.
This is all fine and dandy, but how do you apply these rules to coins from a country like the United States? Actually, you really cannot. Typically, the only clear reference to a minting authority (i.e. the answer to the question: "Who authorized the production of this coin?") -- is the phrase "United States Of America".
Rarely is there any portrait of a U.S. President on U.S. coins. Actually, George Washington, who was President when the very first U.S. coins were minted, strongly opposed the idea of putting his likeness on the face of a coin. He did not want to come across as the equivalent of an old-fashioned European king!
I have looked for clear-cut rules about what constitutes the obverse and reverse sides of U.S. coins, but with limited success. The rules I've seen appear rather arbitrary. Looking in coin catalogs, it seems that any image of a human being carries much weight when assigning the honor of being a coin's obverse side. For instance, a Liberty head is virtually always seen as being on the obverse.
For lack of a human, an animal can also serve the purpose; such as with the "Flying Eagle" one cent coins from 1856-58. Here, the Eagle side is considered to be the obverse.
Well, at least the now so popular 50 State Quarter series leaves no room for doubt -- each one of these coins proudly displays a portrait of George Washington!
Would George Washington have approved of appearing on so many coins? Who knows... To learn more about coins and their history, as well as the value of coins from different perspectives, head over to CoinCollectingSecrets101.com -- and don't forget to sign up for my free mini-course on the secrets of collecting coins once you arrive there.
Source: ezinearticles.com
