Gerrman Gold Coin(Token?)

Whenever you find "coins" that have conflicting design elements, such as both French and German royal symbols, or portraits of both British and French monarchs, or (as in this case) Christian and Muslim themes, then it's a reasonable assumption that it's not a coin, but a token or medal of some kind.

So it is with this piece. It's part of a very extensive series of coin-like objects, called "jetons" in French / English and "rechenpfennige" in German. They were originally produced for use on an abacus-like device called a "counting-board", which helped mediaeval accountants add and subtract sums of money using the complicated pre-decimal monetary systems in Europe. The German city of Nuremberg was a major centre for the production of these "counting tokens" and they were exported from there all over Europe. See this article. It's made of brass, not gold.

As time passed and European monetary systems decimalized and simplified, counting boards went out of fashion and the jeton-makers had to find new customers for their products. They found a new market: card games and other "games of chance", especially in places where either church or state frowned upon gambling with actual money; the tokens were an acceptable substitute.

I think the building is supposed to be the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem; the legend is in German, "IN GOTTES HAND", meaning "In God's Hand". It would have been struck well after the Crusades were over - jetons like this typically date from the 1600s to the late 1800s. I haven't found this particular design referenced anywhere, but it is a Nuremberg type; the reverse legend names the issuer and seems to read "RECHENPF. W.H.LAUER" or something similar; the Lauer family was one of the last of the jeton-making dynasties of Nuremberg, continuing in business up to the late 1800s or even the early 1900s. The use of the modern spelling "Gottes" instead of the more archaic "Gotes" found on older jetons also points to a more modern date for this piece.

Certainly, I am not familiar with the item I see on the screen. However, what I do see prompts me to suggest that this item may be gold plated, maybe as originally intended or later on, after manufacture.

I have even had a couple of coins gold plated myself, simply for no other reason than that I liked them, despite the fact that I have probably destroyed all of their numismatic value.

Cool, educational post!