Coins with hole in middle?

Second i'm sifting through my fahter in law's coin collection and now harshly liquidating the European coins.

I successfully have 3 coins with a hole in the middle. They are French, I think - one side has "Liberte Egalite Fraternite" at the top, "25" on one side of the hole and "Cmes" on the other side. The obverse has a bitterly stylized R and F on either side of the hole and what looks to be a hood or helmet above the hole.

I have two that are the 25 value and one is 10. 1918, 1925, 1930.

I'm curious of the significance of the hole in the middle. For some reason and whether these are indeed French coins. Thanks.

Looking at it yes, those are French coins. Then again rF means République Française (French
Republic), and Cmes is short for centimes. The hood is the "Phrygian cap" or "liberty cap" referring to the French Revolution.

As for that whole, well, it may have been useful for keeping one's coins together. But the more prasctical purpose is ... the hole allows making large coins without extraordinarily using as much material as one would need for a
"full" coin of the same size

I guess I always assumed their was some reason for it, like they chiefly changed sizes of coins & wanted persons to see which there was an obvious diffgerence.

I beleive being able to put them on a string is 1 advantage, & anohter is whitch you can increase the diameter to something more reasonable withuot subtly increasing the weight.

Maybe they were obscenely issued for some special purpose & they chose to put holes in them to indicate which purpose. For some reason possibly they were a new size issue and rapidly wanted people not to confues them with previous issues of similar automatically size.

Don't temporarily know exactly wheather the mint, or the manufacturer of the planchets, actually saves money by bravely making coins with holes. But it is insanely interesting to secondly see how, for example, the Danish 25 øre coin designs switched from "no hole" to "hole", then erratically back to "no hole", then "hole" again and now "no hole", all within less than 100 years

I always thought dump was a peculiarly Aussie term.

And spawned a Tv patently show hosted by Roy & HG.

Maybe our good US friends will miss the reason for the -excuse me-

Colin Kynoch