[MississippiMasterpiece]

Front

Back

[Puddleglum]

It's a sundial.

[TaxRelief]

Wheel and broken axle.

[csvset]

It's a spinning wheel.

What goes up 
Must come down 
Spinning wheel 
Got to go around 
Talkin' 'bout your troubles 
It's a cryin' sin 
Ride a painted pony 
Let the spinning wheel spin 

You got no money 
You got no home 
Spinning wheel 
All alone 
Talkin' 'bout your troubles and you
You never learn 
Ride a painted pony 
Let the spinning wheel turn 

Did you find 
Your directing sign 
On the straight and narrow highway 

Would you mind a reflecting sign 
Just let it shine 
Within your mind 
And show you, the colors 
That are real 

Someone's waiting 
Just for you 
Spinning wheel
Spinning true 
Drop all your troubles by the riverside 
Ride a painted pony 
Let the spinning wheel fly

[Christopher Lincoln]

Can somebody translate the legend on the back?

[durasell]

AND THIS JUST IN: Coin collecting still the second most boring hobby, right behind stamp collecting.

[Lazamataz]

(exaggerated Asian accent) Da UFO have-a da big pee-nis.

[pabianice]

"Hardon of the gods?"

[scouse]

It's the hubcap from a 1678 citroen.

[Woodworker]

A quick look at both sides convinces me that the "flying saucer" is a stylized Sun, loosely modeled on a sunflower. The other side shows rain. That's what crops need, sun and rain.

On the other hand, it definitely isn't a hubcap from a 1678 Citroen, the 1678's had spoke wheels with no hubcaps, so you could change a tire more rapidly.

[wildbill]

Didn't Nostradamus predict this in a quatrain:

"The penis in an alien wheel,
flies through the clouds,
and brings rain to France,
Or God is simply having a little joke, mes amis.

[US_MilitaryRules]

That looks like a sun dial upside down.

[Between the Lines]

Seems this coin is not the only one with the disputed image on it:

[Pete from Shawnee Mission]

Perhaps this is a representation of the wheel of fortune; seize opportunity when the wheel turns your way. Would expect to see Fortuna Major somewhere turning the wheel tho.

Or, could it suggest the action of Jupiter Pluvius, or Jupiter Tonans sending rain upon the earth? It would suggest a shield rather than a wheel and the center axel or shaft representing a phallus? Sky father, earth mother? On one side the clouds are gathering, on the other the rain falls on a tree or plant, life, growth, fecundity?

Perhaps the 16 divisions on the wheel represent the constellations and this is some kind of agrarian planting calander (At one time there were more than 12 constellations in the zodiac--no idea of the number in france when this was minted.) I

Could also be a clock with 1 hand divided into 16 periods. Since time was tracked by the passage of the zodiac signs perhaps there was a time in France that they used a 16 hour clock?

Also, cant rule out that the minter created a design that was so unintelligible and unrelated to whatever his subject was that neither his audiance at the time nor scholars in the present can make sense of it. Could have been as obscure to them as us.

[ARridgerunner]

fyi

[Aquinasfan]

They can be defeatd if we can somehow get a computer virus into their system.

[js1138]

Definitely a male UFO.

[js1138]

A Jewish one, at that.

[Axenolith]

It's a commemorative by a secret sect that passes down the memory of the seeding of this world with life by the Penisosians...

[Jackknife]

[Political Junkie Too]

It looks like a shield with a spike in the center, like this Scottish Targe.

-PJ