J-281 Fake? Or High Dollar Error

to the CCF

Please show both sides of the coin when posting. We don't even know
what year that is which should also be in the heading.
That is supposed to be a gold coin so it is definitely not genuine.

to the Community!

@mike, I have a couple thoughts about how you could figure out more about this coin. First, I'd remove the loop and get an accurate weight and specific gravity for this piece. Second, from your second pic, it looks like part of the edge might be reeded. Is that correct? It will be a bit hard to get a good focus, but could you please add a photo of the edge? Thx. It strikes me as odd that one side was fully struck up but the other doesn't even seem to have a rim. That might be from heavy wear, but could also be indicative of how it was manufactured too.

Thanks Spence. My scales are not super accurate, but this weighs in between 2.5 and 2.6 grams. The one pic shows solder where I guess it was bezeled at one point. Just a guess

Making replica gold coins for use as jewellery was quite common in the 1800s. The replicas are almost always not made from actual gold; if you could have afforded a real gold replica, you might as well have used a genuine gold coin instead. I assume it was deliberately made to be uniface so as not to fall foul of anti-counterfeiting laws.

Well..I'll be darned. Interesting post. Thanks for sharing.