Obverse and its opposite, reverse, refer to the two flat faces of coins and some other two-sided objects, including paper money, flags (see Flag terminology), seals, medals, drawings, old master prints and other works of art, and printed fabrics. In this usage, obverse means the front face of the object and reverse means the back face. The general public commonly calls the obverse of a coin heads, because it often depicts the head of a prominent person, and calls the reverse tails.

In fields of scholarship outside numismatics, the term front is more commonly used than obverse, while usage of reverse is widespread.

In publishing, recto and verso are used for the front and back of pages in books, and often for prints and drawings.

Generally, if in doubt, the side of a coin with the larger scale image will be called the obverse (especially if the image is a single head) and, if that does not serve to distinguish them, the side that is more typical of a wide range of coins from that location will be called the obverse. A convention now exists typically to display the obverse to the left and the reverse to the right in photographs.