Toss a Coin — Heads or Tails
Toss a coin for heads or tails on an 1878 silver dollar. It is fair, it is free, and nothing you do here leaves your browser.
The toss
Liberty is heads, the eagle is tails. Press Toss; the coin hangs at the top long enough to call it.
Obverse and reverse, and where “heads” comes from
The two sides of a coin have names older than the word tails. The obverse is the principal side — historically the one carrying the ruler's portrait, which is exactly why calling it "heads" caught on. The reverse carries the emblem, the wreath, the animal, the value. "Tails" is the later, informal answer to heads, and its origin is unglamorous: it is simply the other one, probably by way of the tail of the creature so often engraved there.
This coin follows that structure exactly, because it is one. The obverse is Liberty in profile facing left, wearing a coronet and a Phrygian cap wreathed with wheat and cotton; the reverse is an eagle with outspread wings, clutching arrows and an olive branch. Around both runs a rim legend and a ring of dentils — the visual grammar that makes a disc read as struck rather than printed.
Which coin this is, and why that one
Both faces are photographs of an 1878-CC Morgan silver dollar from the Smithsonian National Numismatic Collection. George T. Morgan engraved the design in 1878, so it has been in the public domain for well over a century, and this particular photograph is a US Government work rather than a licensed image — no attribution obligation, no share-alike condition attached to it.
That second point decided which photograph to use. The obvious high-resolution shots of Morgan dollars on Wikimedia are licensed CC BY-SA, and building a site asset from one of those would have pushed a copyleft licence onto our own artwork. A public-domain government photograph of a public-domain design carries neither obligation. To state the obvious: this site is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or associated with the United States Mint or the Smithsonian Institution, and the image is a picture of a coin — not legal tender and not a reproduction anyone could spend.
We tried drawing our own classical head first, and it was not good enough. A coin portrait is an engraver's craft: the profile's front edge moves only a few percent of the coin's width between brow, nose and chin, and reading it as a face depends on modelling that vanishes at the size a coin actually renders. A real struck coin already solved that problem in 1878.
What the coin does when it lands
Not much, deliberately. A coin dropped flat slaps the surface and rocks once before it is still, so that is what the landing does: a single damped rock along one axis, about a quarter of a second, and then rest.
An earlier version of this page did something more elaborate. It leaned the coin and swept that lean around the rim, which is the Euler's-disk effect — the accelerating rattle you get from a spinning disc settling on a hard surface. It is a real phenomenon and a genuinely lovely one, and it was wrong here: sweeping the lean makes the coin look like it is spinning on its edge, balanced upright, which is not what a coin that has just landed flat does. It also stretched the moment of the result out by a full second for no gain. A landing should hand you the answer, not perform.
None of it decides anything regardless. The face was drawn before the coin moved, and every part of the flight is choreography over a result that was already fixed — the same relationship the methodology page describes for the rest of the animation.
Which coin should you use
Use this one when you want the ritual: a real coin, with a side you have to recognise rather than read. Use the plain coin when you want the answer at a glance — two different metals and the words HEADS and TAILS on the faces are simply faster to read, which matters if you are tossing repeatedly, glancing from a distance, or looking at a small screen. Both keep the same session tally, and both announce the result as text underneath regardless of which artwork is on the disc.
Frequently asked questions
Is that a real coin?
Yes. Both faces are photographs of an 1878-CC Morgan silver dollar held in the Smithsonian National Numismatic Collection. The coin design is by George T. Morgan and dates from 1878, so it has been in the public domain for well over a century, and the photograph is a US Government work rather than a licensed stock image. We are not affiliated with, endorsed by, or associated with the US Mint or the Smithsonian, and nothing here is legal tender or a reproduction you could spend.
How is this different from the plain coin?
Only the artwork. The plain coin is a drawn disc in two metals — gold heads, silver tails — so the result is readable at a glance from across a room. This one is a photographed silver dollar, one metal on both faces, which asks slightly more of your eyes and looks like the thing it is. The draw, the flight, the call modes, and the tally are the same code.
Which side is heads?
The Liberty portrait. That is the convention the words come from: the obverse — heads — carries a head, and the reverse carries the emblem, here an eagle with outspread wings. You never have to rely on recognising it, though; every result is announced as text directly under the coin.
Why does it rock slightly when it lands?
Because a dropped coin does not stop dead — it slaps down and rocks once before it is still. That is all the landing does here: a single damped rock, a quarter of a second, and it is at rest. It deliberately does not spin on its rim: a coin balanced on edge, whirling in place, is a striking effect and completely wrong for a coin that has just landed flat. Like the rest of the flight it is presentation, and the face was decided before any of it began.
Games and tie-breaks only: fair enough for who goes first, not a certified randomness source for wagering or anything auditable. Everything runs locally in your browser — the draw and its tests are documented on the methodology page.