Help ID these if you can.....warning.6 Images inside Dial uppers.

[goose3]

The lady from the paper brought her box of coins in today. I'm sad to report that there were no key dates but a mixture of various older "Type" stuff. I suggested she get a "type" album and start collecting. here are 3 coins that I photo'd in hopes that some of you can identify.

The first one appears to be either darkside/colonial.

 

This second one is about the size of a dime and appears to be possibly brass or copper. The tiny lettering on the reverse is The Lord's Prayer. I was thinking it was some sort of novelty piece.

 

The last one was passed down through her family. It appears to be a California Fractional Gold piece but I know NOTHING about them. It seemed Awful thin but had PL surfaces.

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[TomB]

Here's my not-too-informative take on these-

 

The first one appears Belgian, but you probably already knew this. The second is likely a token from a manufacturer given out around WWI. I write this because of how the soldier is dressed and the fact that I have a slightly similar one from US contracted shoe manufacturer for WWI boots. The last looks real, at first glance, as these were often PL and quite a large percentage of the off-metal tokens feature a bear on them. I don't know much about CA fractional gold, so take it for what it's worth.

[goose3]

TomB

were the fractional gold pieces Very thin??

I've never held one but this seemed abnormally thin.

 

any idea of value anyone on the gold? Looked pretty original.

[Aethelred]

They are quite thin.

[TomB]

They are extremely thin. Remember, they only had somewhat less than 25 cents of gold in them. I think these only have about one-hundreth of an ounce of pure gold in them, so their bullion value is negligible. They were circulated well before the Civil War, however, at some point during the war they were legislated out of existance. Even with that, they were still issued until the 1880s.

 

This piece has a large G on the obverse and this is one of the known maker's marks, also, it has the word DOLLAR on the reverse and these always had the denomination written out in some manner. The later, fantasy pieces that were made were back-dated and did not carry a denomination. These fantasy pieces are the ones that I mentioned before, often with a bear on them.

 

Some of these are quite rare, but they are traded very thinly. The piece you pictured looks like it grades quite high, I don't have the image open right now, but I think AU or MS. In my largely-ignorant/slightly-educated opinion, this is a $175 coin and, if a very rare issue, substantially more. I know that at least PCGS slabs these now, perhaps NGC does, too.

 

I have an auction catalog with many of these illustrated, if I can find it, I will look up the variety.