1854 D California Gold Round

If I'm parsing PCGS Coin Facts correctly (and they're correct), 422A appears to have 422's Obverse and 423's Reverse. The first left star location - and the shape of the loop on the reverse - are diagnostic and specify the OP coin as 423, if real.

I have a coin that is similar to this one but only has 10 stars around Indian head and on the backside has a bear with sunset with sunrays around it and says California gold around the sunset. It is dated 1849. I have shown this to multiple coin dealers but no one has ever seen one and I have never been able to find it in any books. I hope someone here can help! I have pics. but can't get them uploaded, I'm sure it is my fault but as usual for some reason this coin doesn't want to be identified. Was given as a X-Mas gift in the 60's to my wife by her grandpa. He told her (her parents) not to ever make a necklace/pendant etc. with this because it was valuable? He was a collector extraordinaire. Thanks in advance for any help you can give.

The bear is the first give away . All California gold that have a bear on them are tokens, not real California Fractional gold.
That is not to say it is not real gold. Many of these tokens were brass or plated, but many were also made of real gold.

Yes, there is a BG-422, but the reverse on that is dated 1853 with a very high 3. The obverse of BG-422 appears the same as BG-422a with the diagnostics you correctly call out (star 1 slightly above truncation, coronet point about equally spaced between stars 5 and 6). I have the Jay Roe catalog (Bowers and Merena, 9/2003) which is a good substitute for the standard reference, the second edition of Breen-Gillio which costs several hundred dollars if you can even find one. I'm not good with them either but the Jay Roe Collection seems to have every variety I have ever researched, although I haven't flipped front to back of all 149 pages to see how many BG numbers are omitted. (There are one each of BG-420, BG-421, BG-422, BG-422a, and BG-423 through 425).

I think the OP's piece is a BG-423 as well, and I too would love to hear an update on the OP.

Best Regards,

George

At long last....I finally had the coin graded. It did indeed come back a BG-423. PCGS gave is an AU58 grade.

14 months later and Holy Cow Batman - that's quite a piece! It's authenticated as an 1854 Liberty Round 50 Cents, BG-423, High R6! This one recently sold on Heritage for over $3,000. Yours might not be the $15k-$20k piece we thought but it's still a very rare and valuable find. Congratulations!

http://coins.ha.com/itm/a/1231-6845.s

I totally agree with the view of vermontensium.

If it was to be sold through Heritage, this piece would end up being verified twice.
That has to be good for the buyer, the seller, AND the coin istelf.

It is after all, a small piece of privately owned American heritge.