Recall that a commutative Banach $*$-algebra $A$ is called symmetric if the Gelfand transform replaces involution in $A$ by complex conjugation in $\mathbb{C}$. Moreover, any commutative C* algebra is symmetric.
What is an example of a symmetric (commutative Banach $*$-) algebra, in the above sense, that is not a C* algebra? I have not been able to think of an example.
Let $A$ be ${\mathbb C}^2$ with the pointvise multiplication and the involution $(x,y)^*=(\overline{x},\overline{y})$, i.e., continuous functions on two points. But the norm let be $\|(x,y)\|=|x|+|y|$.