Just won this little guy from Heritage Auctions US Signature Sale....

AV 1/2 Dollar 1872
California Territorial Gold Issue

 

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How much did you pay.

 

Love it! Here's my favorite fractional:

 

jwitten....beautifull coin!

icollectoldmoney...I won it for $700.00 plud comm. fees.

I am into all gold coinage, starting to get into US coinage now
John

 

Kripes! One never kisses and tells..........

 

Oh shoot........he did.....

 

Beautiful!

 

That is awesome. I have always wanted one of those.

 

I like gold just been out of reach the last couple of years.

 

Congratulations!

 

Those NGC holders cover 1/3 of the coin. That is a bit distracting. Too bad, looks like a nice California fractional gold piece.

 

Agreed. Love the coin, hate the NGC prongs covering it like that.

 

I love the toning. Does the “G” under the bust stand for gold?

 

Honestly, I'm not sure.

 

I think it's the coiner's initial - his privy mark. There should be a list of them and their dates of service. I would hope if someone paid $500 for something that they would know about the details.

 

My pcgs holder covers all of the edges of mine, where you can't really tell it's not round

Nah, I bought it because of the beautiful toning. The details didn't matter as much to me.

 

One's that small there's no way to avoid it, to me the clear PCGS prongs gives it a better look than the white NGC ones intruding into the coin like they do. Either way they're cool little pieces

 

I would certainly have bought that without knowing what the G was.

 

Either the coiners or more likely the die engravers initials. Since these were privately issued and many of these pieces were somewhat "anonymous" there may be no records of who "G" was. We do know some of theengravers, but I doubt that we know all of them.

 

Are there any guides or websites that list engravers?