1876-CC 20C MS65 PCGS. BF-NC-1, R.6.. ...

"You are hereby authorized and directed to melt all 20-cent pieces you have on hand, and you will debit 'Silver Profit Fund' with any losses thereon."

"The pieces of 1876-CC have become very rare, as we noted in our preface, from the negligence of Western collectors, or the indifference of all to Mint Mark rarities."


Apparently, Heaton was not aware of the destruction of most of the 1876-CC mintage in 1877. He believed the issue had been depleted over the years by the usual process of wear and attrition in circulation. Linderman's memo ordering the destruction of the stored mintage, the real cause of the rarity of the 1876-CC, was only discovered in the early 1960s, by researcher Walter Thompson.

By 1894, at least three specimens were known to collectors, as reported in the June issue of The Numismatist. At least one more auction of an 1876-CC twenty cent piece took place in the 19th century, in lot 216 of the Simeon L. Lee Collection (Scott Stamp & Coin, 6/1899). Lee was a wealthy doctor and a resident of Carson City. His coin was an Uncirculated example and we assume he acquired it directly from the Carson City Mint in 1876. The lot realized a substantial price of $26.25, to prominent collector John M. Clapp. It later passed into the fabulous collections of Louis E. Eliasberg and Eugene Gardner, and is graded PCGS MS64 today

"1876 C.C. mint. Obv. Uncirculated; rev., proof surface. Very rare. Only five known."

The lot realized another record price of $28, to S. Benton Emery. Emery's family preserved the coin until it was sold in a Bowers and Merena sale in 1984. It is currently graded PCGS MS66.

One of the great unexplained mysteries of the 1876-CC is the high quality of most of the survivors. Like the Lee-Clapp-Eliasberg and Hubbard-Emery specimens that were discovered so early, most of the coins we know about today are attractive, high-grade pieces. By law, a number of coins from each year's mintage were set aside for examination by the Assay Commission in Washington, D.C. Naturally, the coins selected tended to be high-quality specimens that would impress the examiners with the craftsmanship of the issuing facility. It has been suggested that the bulk of survivors represent untested specimens that were preserved by members of the Assay Commission, and we suspect at least some of the coins are from this source. However, Rusty Goe points out that the number of Uncirculated survivors probably exceeds the number of coins that would be sent to the Assay Commission for a mintage of 10,000 pieces. There was virtually no numismatic interest in branch mint issues before Heaton published his book in 1893. It would be extremely unusual for collectors to mail order a number of high-grade examples from a remote mint like Carson City in 1876, before the mintage was destroyed. As unlikely as it seems, a number of local Carson City residents, like Dr. Simeon Lee and John Seagraves Peck, must have acquired a few coins for their novelty value and preserved them for future generations.

The population of known examples increased slowly after the turn of the century, with only one or two more examples surfacing over the next 50 years. Then, in the late 1950s, the number of survivors expanded considerably when Baltimore dealer Tom Warfield discovered a group of splendid Uncirculated examples in a Maryland estate. The original owner of this remarkable hoard has never been identified, but it has been suggested that he was a member of the Assay Commission in 1877 and set these coins aside for posterity. The exact number of pieces in the Maryland Hoard has not been firmly established, with estimates from different sources varying from five to 10 pieces.

Of course, prices for the 1876-CC have increased exponentially from the early days of the 20th century, when a collector like S. Benton Emery could purchase one of the finest known examples for $28. The current record price realized for an 1876-CC is $564,000, realized by a PCGS MS65 specimen in a Stack's Bowers auction in 2013. We expect the upward trend to continue for the foreseeable future.

Both examples show a thin, curving scratch in the left obverse field, from Liberty's arm to near star 4.
Both specimens exhibit a dark round color spot between R and I in AMERICA.
Both coins have a tiny diagonal scratch across the upright of the I in AMERICA, near the base.