Identify this gold coin

January 26, 2007 5:53 PM

NumismaticFilter: Can you help me identify this gold coin?

The front looks like a Large Indian Head gold dollar. But I can't find anything about the design on the back, where the date should be. It looks like someone tried to turn it into a pendant, but didn't do a very good job. This leads me to believe that it was originally a coin, not just a piece of jewelry made to look like one.

Any ideas? Any information would be appreciated. Thanks.

posted by DarkForest to Grab Bag (11 answers total)

The head-side looks sort of like the image at wikipedia of a three-dollar coin, but the tails-side doesn't match that coin.
posted by LobsterMitten at 7:26 PM on January 26, 2007

I'd think that the lack of "One Dollar" and a date would mean that it wasn't legal tender, which leaves the possibility of it being a one-sided striking proof (if that was ever done, I haven't a clue)... From googling around, a small 's' on other such coins means it was minted in San Francisco. So perhaps the big ornate S means something similar?

IANANumismatist
posted by CKmtl at 7:30 PM on January 26, 2007

A better image of the coin. Scroll down to the second set of pictures; yours looks like the head-side of the 1880 coin, not the earlier one. These are one-dollar coins that look almost exactly like the three-dollar coins.

Here's another picture of the three-dollar coin.
A different but similar coin, one-dollar.
posted by LobsterMitten at 7:39 PM on January 26, 2007

The design on the back looks like a small-scale nonprofessional job to me -- e.g. for a club, fraternity, etc. It would probably be worth taking to a real coin appraiser, who could tell you if the coin is for real. That might suggest that the other side and the pendant-making happened a relatively long time ago, since these coins are pretty valuable now so a modern club wouldn't modify one in this way.
posted by LobsterMitten at 7:45 PM on January 26, 2007

One avenue of research is to assume the 'SS' logo is a trademark and look it up in the uspto trademark database; there are 856 double S trademarks listed.
posted by Osmanthus at 8:28 PM on January 26, 2007

The obverse either is, or is modeled after, an early American gold dollar or three dollar coin.

The reverse has been tampered with. If it was in fact an American gold piece, it's numismatic value is now nil due to the destruction wrought by the soldering and whatever was done to the reverse.

Now it is just a novelty that's probably worth only its scrap gold value or whatever you can get for it.
posted by MasonDixon at 9:06 PM on January 26, 2007

That's not a coin, that's a pendant.
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 12:40 AM on January 27, 2007

Response by poster: Thank you for your responses. The diameter of the coin matches the one dollar variety, rather than the three dollar coin. My lousy scan doesn't show it, but the imprint is quite detailed - unlike what you might see in jewelry knockoff of the design, and I doubt the reverse side has been modified - the background doesn't show any sign of a previous image.
posted by DarkForest at 4:24 AM on January 27, 2007

I agree with most of the above, but for quite a while, private mints abounded in the US and there is a wide variety of old coinage out there that doesn't fall into the 'official' list. The thing looks fake to me, or jewelry oriented, but I wouldn't rule out another story entirely.

I have sent photos of very a unusual article to an auction houses (Sotheby's) for expert assessment, believe it or not, and got rather detailed response from them. (The items were oriental vases of questionable date.) Perhaps you might want to consider something along those lines.

Good luck.
posted by FauxScot at 6:19 AM on January 27, 2007

I think Den Beste has it. It's a pendant modeled after a then-common coin (on the obverse).
posted by megatherium at 6:46 AM on January 27, 2007

That is a three dollar coin (I have a similar one in my collection). But it looks like the back image was sanded out and then redone with an initial mark. Not a cleanly done monogram, in my opinion. In its current state I think it is probably worth around $325 given the market for curio pieces on the jewelry market.
posted by parmanparman at 10:14 AM on January 29, 2007