I have a coin that was given to me and I am having difficulty locating it in the red book or the PCGS online web site. Description: Small octagon shape gold coin with an Indian head on the front, a wreath on the back that has the word California Gold in semi circle fashion. In the center of the coin, in the wreath is a date of 1857. I belive this to be a coin from when states were minting their own gold coins to be used locally. Can anyone refer me to a good reference book regarding this coin and others like it. Thanx in advance.
What you are referring to is a token. Many of these flood the market and they have a very nominal value. I sell them for around a dollar. California assayers did issue fractional gold coins in denominations of 25 cents, 50 cents, and 1 dollar. ALL of these have the denomination written on the reverse. Here is an example of a real gold fractional coin. These were minted round and octagonal. Hope that helps.
Here is a good book for referrence. Many others are out there and some are better, but this should get you started. http://brooklyngallery.com/shopping/shopping.htm
If the new edition of CALIFORNIA PIONEER FRACTIONAL GOLD by Walter Breen and Ronald J. Gillio were only a superlative work of numismatic scholarship, that would justify owning it. If the gripping historical narratives were published alone, the book would be still be a valuable addition to a numismatist's reference shelf. Combined, the neticulous data and their cultural context make this a "must have" book for any collector of American money. CALIFORNIA PIONEER FRACTIONAL GOLD might seem a narrow interest, not much different from a good work about the life of James Longacre or national banknotes. This book is unique because it brings deep understanding to the most puzzling monetary artifacts of the California Gold Rush, itself a paradigm for the Americanization of the frontier continent, CFPG raises deeper questions about what money is, when people need it, how it is created, and how the wider market validates it. CALIFORNIA PIONEER FRACTIONAL GOLD does more than examine curious little coins, though it does this thoroughly. San Francisco was an intensely commericial society, isolated from civilization. Money was as important as fire, yet circulating media were rare. Any and all silver and gold coins found some market, no matter what their intrinsic weight or fineness. Coins from all over Europe passed in trade wtih those from the United States, Mexico and Peru. In this roiling cauldron of commerce, with gold omnipresent, it was inevitable, perhaps, that someone would make small gold coins. So we would like to believe. So believed Walter Breen. He had a libertarian faith in the validity of privately issued dollar and fractional dollar gold coins as a circulating medium. However, for all of his scholarship, and as substantial as was his devotion, he could deliver few facts relevant to the question. Dan Owens's essay in this book presents new facts from primary sources to show that these small gold coins did, in fact, pass in commerce. The groundbreaking work of Breen and Gillio's first edition left a lot of unanswered questions. Until now, any devoted collector of California small gold had to hack through a jungle of misinformation, misunderstanding, and misstatement. Thin evidence (if any) supported claims that this coin or that actually came from the Gold Rush. CPFG sets the record straight. Primary source material has been built in to commercial biographies of the minters. More importantly, the new work carefully parcels out the original issues from the "jewelers pieces" and other replicas from succeeding generations. Those who demand factual accounting in historical writing -- as opposed to the easy gloss of an authority's opinion -- will appreciate the extensive footnoting to original sources that supports the narratives. When one newspaper account comes from another, both are cited when known. When a one source has been lost, that fact is noted, as well. Quotation from and citations to personal correspondence provide insight. In every way, this book does for the first edition what that seminal work originally did for the study of small gold coins of the California Gold Rush. In the generation after the '49ers, jewelers in California, and in other places, continued to make these little gold charms. Those minters are not just identified: they are dossiered. The same has been done for the third wave, which continues to the present. Some of these knock-offs were made from old dies. Some are imports in good gold with a pioneer look to them. Others have shown up in major auctions over the last 50 years. The dealer or collector seeking to attribute a coin can rely on the charts that clearly map out the nearly 3,000 photographs. The methodology of CFPG alone recommends it to any numismatist. We all seek order. This book demonstrates how to find it, or create it. CALIFORNIA PIONEER FRACTIONAL GOLD by Walter Breen and Ronald J. Gillio (A new second edition, Revised and Enlarged) by Robert D. Leonard, Jr., Jay Roe, Jack Totheroh, Ronald J. Gillio, Robert Lecce and Richard Lecce (March 2003 by Bowers and Merena Galleries).
