Had some time today to sift through my little bin of oddities and found this one. What the heck is it? Appears to be a U.S. issue of some sort. Maybe a civil war token?
This is the BG-1328 variety of California tokens, dated 1864. I have one of these and yours could very well be genuine because the originals were made in brass. Not sure if mine is real, but if it's listed as a BG number, there should be a way to tell if you've got the real thing.
Well you are deeper in the (coin) weeds of the matter than my relatively semi-amateurish self was expecting. But I suppose that is or could be a good thing. What reference material are you using?
The standard reference for the series, California Pioneer Fractional Gold, first published by Walter Breen and Ron Gillio (BG numbers) in 1983, lists nearly 600 varieties Updated edition 2003.
For my example, I did some digging on the internet until I found the matching one. PCGS lists it here: https://www.pcgs.com/coinfacts/coin/1864-1-bg-1328/516802 The only thing about the books is that they are listed for hundreds of dollars each - even the 2003 revised editions. I'd say if you're into California tokens, the book will pay for itself though. I think typically with BG numbers this high, you'll start to see tokens made of brass; the one you have is brass, but if it's real, it likely circulated among the gold coins of the time.
Probably been through at least one. I'd say at that time, the brass coins, even with gold coins' denominations, were treated with significantly less care than the gold ones, sort of like how we do them today.
