During the last days several postings talked about old coins and other
objects found in automatic musical instruments.  I did not check all
these postings in detail but it might be of interest which one found
would be the eldest one.

My eldest coin I found, was hidden in a recently restored French barrel
café house piano.  In the bottom of this instrument I found four old
coins, each 10 centimes.  The eldest one is stamped:

  front side: NAPOLEON III EMPEREUR     1856
  back side:  EMPIRE FRANCAIS   DIX CENTIMES

This does not mean that the instrument dates from that time -- it is
from around 1900 -- but it gives me some feeling of the long history of
this individual instrument.  I will keep the coins with the instrument!

Regards from Germany
Christian Greinacher