Does anyone know what type of coin this may be? Real or fake, just curious... Thank you to anyone who might have an idea!
Thank you. The thing is that the gold trim is actually real gold. That’s what makes me wonder - why would someone put real gold around a fake piece? I think that’s strange...
The gold trim appears to be a bezel for a piece of jewelry. At some point, this was probably a necklace and subsequently the chain and attachment were removed, leaving only the bezel.
I considered the same thing but there’s nothing on it that would suggest it had attached jewelery parts. However maybe that was the intention but never completed? :/
It's easy to have the chain and attachment removed without any trace that these parts previously existed. I have such a coin myself, with a surrounding bezel, for which I had the chain and attachment removed. The bezel was slightly polished to eliminate any trace of mounting.
The coin looks like what was called a gold 'cob' pistole. I have a replica piece myself. The cross pattern on it is the tell-tale. The reverse on mine, however, is stamped with text that says what it is supposed to be. An actual cob pistole would have a reverse like yours. I would be very hesitant to suggest that yours is real, but they are known to occasionally turn up, so maybe it wouldn't hurt to have it weighed. The cob pistole was traditionally pirate gold. Since it was not a good idea to get caught with identifiable gold coinage, it was a common practice among the pirate trade to melt the gold down and cast it into rough round bars called 'cobs'. The cobs were only about a finger-width in diameter. Pure gold is as dense and heavy as lead, don't forget, but it is also slightly softer and can be cut and pressed fairly easily. The cobs would be cut into more-or-less regular slices, trimmed to be of equal weight, and stamped with that cross pattern on one side and a 'captain's pattern' on the other side, indicating they had been produced under the watch of a specific pirate. The captain's mark indicated that the captain who had had them produced staked his reputation among the other captains as to their authenticity and value. They were used for trade as though they were official coinage, and because of the way they had been made, the gold plunder that they had come from could not be traced so the authorities would not be able to link a specific person to a particular act of piracy or theft. Anyone could have them through trade, so there was no trail of provenance.
