Anyone Know What This Is And

I have one of these. I will try to post a picture when I get home. They are tiny, maybe 3/8". The one pictured is a token. There is about a 99.9% chance that any others that look like this one are tokens made long after the date they have on them. Real California gold pieces should be authenticated by a reputable dealer or a TPG. I found this website (no affiliation) that has a lot of information and was helpful in identifying when mine might have been made.

http://www.calgoldcoin.com/

I knew what I was getting and that it was not an authentic California gold piece and it was priced in the $7 - $10 range. If you want to buy gold (investment or otherwise) these are not for you.

Hope this helps.

Jim

Mike and I were just discussing these the other day. Within the last 4 weeks, the ebay market is glutted with "California gold tokens". While I have not seen one in-hand, I would tend to think that they have no gold content. The ones that I have seen on ebay appear to be some sort of mass-produced token. I don't know if they came from overseas, but there are a lot of US sellers with them now. Some of these have denominations on the reverse, but I firmly believe that these are all fantasy pieces.

By the way, Gary, if you are looking for opinions (and even if you're not ), I think that older gold coins are a better investment than modern gold. The older coins have lower mintages and will always have a numismatic premium over melt value. I don't know that this will always be true for the modern issues since there are so many of them minted every year. Just my opinion.

I think any california gold piece with the little bear on the the reverse is a replica/fantasy piece. I have a couple just about like that one.

Just to follow up, here are scans of the 1857 California "Gold" token that I have. The scanner cut off the left edge but you get the point.





Enjoy,

Jim

Hmm, for $250 you might be able to find one of the more common Liberty Head 1/2 Eagles like 1886S, or early 1900's... Not sure tho, I don't want to start collection gold (outside the 2006 $25 Eagle I got for the birth of my daughter) since I would go broke! Silver is more my speed...

There are lots of fakes of this type floating around, I know a dealer who has a bunch

Hi Gary,

Your best bang for the buck in my opinion is for a circulated Liberty $5 gold piece. They contain 0.2419 ounces of pure gold. You should easily be able to get a nice one for well below $250. I bought an 1881 coin from Long Island Rare Coins recently for $225; it was a relatively scarce repunched date variety and was certified AU53 by ANACS. You should be able to get a decent raw example of a common date for even less.

A US gold dollar is a nice coin, but it only contains 0.04837 ounces of gold and will probably cost almost as much as a Liberty $5 coin. If your primary goal is to accumulate some gold, the $5 gold piece is clearly the better choice.

I would absolutely stay away from those little fantasy pieces. Even if they are gold, you have no assurance of purity or total gold content and will consequently have trouble even getting bullion value for them if you try to sell.

Good luck!

I like the $2 1/2 indians because they are cheap (well compared to the other denominations and it has the incuse indian which looks good even in circulated condition. You can find these rather cheaply (cheaper than the $2 1/2 liberty for some reason) but the $5.00 liberty is also a good choice if you are buying for gold content because it will probably be about the same price range