1849 Oregon Territory $10 Gold Piece Is This Real

I recently purchased a bag of assorted tokens and coins at an auction that had a counterfeit Mormon gold piece in it. You're looks like a higher quality specimen than the fake that I received so as to its genuineness I don't know. A good place to start is a jewelry store or pawn shop. They can put it on an rf analyzer or metalytics and tell you the composition in under a minute. I believe the Mormon gold coins were 8 to 10 carat.

to the Community!

Just remember:
ALL US gold coins have been faked, even the common ones, the best fakes in .900 gold.

leftcoastcoins has shined a true light on the possibility of Mormon gold fakes, which have also been made in good quality gold. The book 'Numismatic Forgery', by Charles M Larson, shows how really convincing such a fake can be. This book was endorsed by none other than a past President of the ANA.

Due to the potential value, this coin definitely should be closely examined by a professional expert in this series.

I am nowhere near skilled or experienced enough to consider the character of the damage this coin may have sustained in it's exposure in a creek bed. That is most probably how Heritage or some other professional business will establish the veracity of your provenance.

If it was taken to Heritage, they would question you to consider the veracity of the provenance.
If you wish to sell it, it's authenticity needs to be established, thus Heritage would be a good place to start, to do that.

I would trust Heritage in preference to a TPG, whose main job is to grade coins, not verify them.
In order for a TPG to protect their own professional butt, if they were unsure about the coin, it would simply not get graded, and so you would have to resort to Heritage anyway, along with some already implied expressed doubt about it.

Hard to argue.

Other than having a beaver on a log and most of the same letters and numbers (the OP coin has an I instead of a T), pretty much everything is wrong compared to a real one. I'm not sure what to think of the story - I suspect there are some people who get their jollies from putting counterfeits where someone else will find them, for whatever reason. Or maybe some kid just tossed their souvenir. I think I've read about metal detecting finds turning out to be fake as well.

i have to go with the majority here. the coin does not look genuine. too many issues. lettering not correct. date not correct. surface and color is not right, tree limb not correct. beaver body shape wrong etc...

I also agree.