Visited a St Augustine coin show. Had a great time and picked up a couple of bits that interested me. I had heard of Fractionals, but knew very little about them but saw this and was assured that although it was a copy, it was gold. The guy was due at a coin show the next day so I thought that I'd take a punt at $20 that I was buying a tiny bit of gold - and if it turned out bad, I'd take it back the next day. Thanks to the experts here, the was soon ID'd as a cheap base copy and worth nothing. Obviously the guy didn't show the next day and I am now the owner! It could be worse and the worst bit is that I thought the guy was trustworthy and that hurts more than actually buying a pup. The moral of the story is that a good education costs money!
If you learned from this experience, then it was money well spent. $20 is nothing to what you could have spent to learn the same lesson.
Well, let's give you a bit more return for your educational investment. Genuine California Gold tokens of that era never include a bear. There are three major production types - first, the Period One "originals" produced between 1852-1882, which will always have "DOL," "DOLLAR," "DOLL" or "CENTS" on them. Second, the Period Two tokens produced by jewelers (and usually backdated) between 1882 and 1883 or so - these won't always have the previous words, because the Private Coinages Act (prohibiting private coinage) was passed in 1864 prohibiting any form of "Dollar" on non-US issue coins, and another law in 1883 (in response to the Racketeer Nickels) forced removal of the Liberty and Indian heads as they resembled circulating currency too closely. That led to the Period Three coins - only Herman Kroll is known to have produced "genuine" examples, I think, and some of his dies later fell into the hands of folks who then produced more-or-less quality fakes, some of which were of better gold assay than the originals. Only Period One coins actually circulated, but all three categories are considered collectible and the TPG's encapsulate them. None include a bear, as far as I know. The bear is an artifact of modern fakery.
Thanks all. I have now read quite a bit about fractionals and SuperDave has nailed it. Stupidity kicks in at times and whilst I always knew it was not a 'real' fractional, I was hoping for (and was told it was) gold. Some period two are and it was always going to be a gamble with no way of researching at the event. Is it better to take a $20 gamble and regret it? In this instance obviously not!
We should all be so lucky to make such a modest mistake. We should all be so wise as to share that mistake with others so they might avoid it.
It's bad enough that jerk sellers contaminate EBay to the point that many of us won't deal there. But they also invade coin shows. It takes a special gall (or sociopathy) to screw a buyer while looking at him.
Actually, I'd much rather he try to palm off a fake in person where I can actually see what I'm buying than have him do it to me online.