Napoleon III : 10 centimes coin

by norsewolf

when my grandfather was a little boy, he often went out in the fields ''hunting'' for archeological stuff ( I think that, if it wouldn't have been for him giving away so much stuff to self-proclaimed historians, he could have started his own museum haha :P). Anyway, he's getting kinda old now, and he's giving me stuff of his collection, piece by piece. The last thing I recieved from him was a coin ( dix centimes) from 1854, when Napoleon III was the emperor of France. but I noticed something strange. His head is on one side, and the eagle (is it an eagle ?) on the other, but when you hold the coin so that Napoleon's head is like it should be ( you know, not with his neck up), the bird on the other side is upside down. Now I can't find anything on the internet about it, but something tells me that's not how it should be. Am I right ? Were those mistakes made often ?

Searocksandtrees

hi! it would be worth x-posting this to coin experts in /r/coins, /r/numismatics/

yemrot

The coin is like that and yes that is how every coin minted under Napoleon III was made. Many ancient coins were minted that way however the practice fell out of favor during the renaissance but France kept coins orientated like that until the twentieth century and the United States continues to this day to produce coins aligned on 180.