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Message:: [QUOTE="xlrcable, post: 2768923, member: 41288"]These are worth talking about, if only because those of us who look at Mexican coins on eBay have to slog through so many of them. They've been around for decades. Neil Utberg listed something similar in The Coins of the Republic of Mexico 1823-1905. He shows a tiny gold medal, about 10mm in diameter, with Maximilian's head on one side (a crude facsimile of the Maximilian silver peso) and a small eagle on the other with the date 1865. He goes on: "With a magnifier you will note a small initial 'B' on the medal. This is the initial of Sr. Baron who had the medal struck and is still having them struck." That was in the 1960s. Utberg seems to have included the medal in his book to dispel a widespread perception that it was really an old coin. The version that's common today lacks the initial "B" but looks very similar, like the photos in post #5. Like Sr. Baron's original medal, it's often represented as a gold one peso coin (as silvereagle points out, an impossibility in 1865) but just as often as a gold-plated souvenir piece. They usually trade for a few bucks, but yeah, occasionally you see one sell for a price that makes you cringe.[/QUOTE]