Anyone Very Knowledgeable About 1870-CC Dollars?
M4Madness
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I recently purchased the above coin, which is attributed as an OC-9. That is the first die pair used on these.
http://www.seateddollarvarieties.com/1870-CC.shtml
The above site lists 11 minting dates for the 9 die pairs. Has anyone seen any records to indicate when the change from die pair #1 to die pair #2 occurred? I think it would be cool if mine were minted in the first batch ever. I doubt there's a way to narrow it down, but I figured I'd ask anyway. Lol!
9
Comments
Can't help but will say that the CC mint began minting dollars on Feb 4th.
bob
Calling @Inspired70
He might know
“We are only their care-takers,” he posed, “if we take good care of them, then centuries from now they may still be here … ”
Todd - BHNC #242
Thanks @pursuitofliberty.
@M4Madness nice pickup in the auction earlier this week. Finding a 1870-CC with a CAC in any grade is tough. Only 36 in total series have the CAC designation.
Best source for die pair attribution is Dick Osborn and Brian Cushing's Seated Dollar Varieties book.
Link to the 1870-CC page that has die sequencing.
Hope it helps.
http://www.seateddollarvarieties.com/1870-CC.shtml
Yeah, I'd come across your comments while researching that coin. And I also have a photo of your beautiful engraved one on my phone.
My Carson City Morgan Registry Set
Thanks! I wanted that dollar badly for my CC type set and would have paid $3K more for it if I'd have had to.
I've read that site, and while it gets me closer to an answer, it doesn't go all the way. If there had been 9 die pairs and 9 days of minting, it would probably be a safe assumption that each run had a different die pair. But with 11 days of minting that year, obviously a couple would have had to have had two days' usage -- assuming dies weren't changed mid run. And surely we'd have seen coins with evidence of die breaks if there'd been a failure.
I'd like to assume that since the first day's run was the largest, that it was the only day the OC-9 pair was used. But that can never be proven short of some sort of mint documentation regarding die changes (new dies, polished dies, etc.)
My Carson City Morgan Registry Set
@M4Madness I'm not at all an expert on the 70-CC but just for fun here is a social media post I did on my 70-CC a year ago:
154 years ago today, the Carson City Mint officially delivered its first coinage: 2,303 1870-CC dollars.
Much as the California Gold Rush begat the San Francisco Mint, the silver bonanza of the Comstock Lode gave birth to the Carson City Mint. As the first silver dollar from a storied mint in the Silver State, the 1870-CC is a very popular coin - perhaps the most popular in the seated dollar series. It was also quite popular at the time; one newspaper reported that 1,000 dollars had been purchased as pocket pieces.
Interestingly enough, little of the Comstock Lode’s precious metal bounty would be turned into CC coins in the first few years of the Mint’s operation. Many miners found it more profitable to have their ore refined hundreds of miles west in San Francisco, and those who deposited bullion at Carson City often preferred receiving ingots in lieu of coins. This helps to explain the famous rarity of early CC-mintmarked coins.
That said, the 1870-CC $1 is not rare for an early CC-mintmarked coin or for a seated dollar. If you want a Carson City coin from 1870, or a CC seated dollar, the 70-CC $1 is the most available and affordable choice. Some specialists in the series consider it overvalued considering its availability.
But since I’m a hopeless sucker for to overrated coins, here we are 😂. And since only 4% of the 70-CC dollars in the P/N pop reports have been approved by CAC - 38 in total - I had to overpay to secure a wholesome example.
I also think that an overrated seated dollar is still underrated compared to its Morgan dollar successor. PCGS survival estimates imply that there are 25 1889-CC Morgans for each remaining 1870-CC dollar, yet the coins are comparably priced in circ grades.
This particular coin is die marriage OC-9, which means that it was likely one of the first coins delivered on February 11th, 1870. It is wonderfully crusty and original, though Ms. Columbia appears to have been stabbed in the thigh during a scuffle in a watering trough - no doubt an occupational hazard of the Wild West. Thankfully, no sign of coagulated hemoglobin/environmental damage on this saloon girl.
Great thread… The CC SLD dates just do not cross paths with me often enough. I doubt that I will ever own one.
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There is the fact that the population of 1870-CC dollars offers the best chance of getting a Cason City Dollar. Then there is the chance of finding an 1870-CC Dollar that is attractive enough to warrant the considerable cash outlay. In my humble opinion the coin here is undervalued compared to the vast majority of choices for this date. James
@Bigtree
That is a beautiful specimen! Thanks for the write-up!
My Carson City Morgan Registry Set
I never dreamed that I'd fork over that amount for a coin, especially when I only started collecting two years ago. I certainly don't have the income that most people who buy coins of this caliber do. It took a lot of overtime hours and penny pinching, believe me. I still haven't told my wife...
My Carson City Morgan Registry Set
I love it all on that 70 cc, I like 👍
It took a while to track this one down for the collection. PCGS MS62 CAC.
Way beyond my pay grade! Lol!
That is a fabulous coin! You should be proud!
My Carson City Morgan Registry Set
@Inspired70
Love that orange toning!
"Got a flaming heart, can't get my fill"
The Feb 11th date is incorrect. Feb 4th is the correct minting date. On Feb 11th, one week after minting began, a female was escorted from the Mint to her bank with armed mint guards. This event became the myth of Feb 11th although it is very easy to determine from both Newspapers of the date and by personal diary that it was likely a staged event (something Curry did all the time). Alf Doten's diary and local papers indicate that minting began with the dollars on Feb 4th.
bob
PS: you can search this site for actual documents showing the correct date.
Thanks guys. She’s the only MS CAC 70-CC, so not easy to come by.
I don't know if the minting logs for CC have been located, scanned into the NNP, or even if they exist at all. Best case is that you find daily production logs that say how many coins were made with each die. This would definitely tell you the full story of the first die pair mintage and let you validate the die marriage chart on the Seated Dollar website cited above. Without that, you can try to assign die pairs to specific days they minted the coins. I put this together from the tables on the website.
There were 11 different dollar minting days. Two pairs of days (3/22 and 3/24, 6/11 and 6/14) are relatively close to each other, so if there were truly 9 die pairs used, I assumed that the same die pair was used on both days in each of those days.
I translated the present observed rarity into a percentage and there are a plenty of outliers. OC-1 has the highest estimated survivor percentage, OC-4 by far the lowest. This begs the question as to the nature of the attrition of these if my assumption of when each was made is correct.
Keeper of the VAM Catalog • Professional Coin Imaging • Prime Number Set • World Coins in Early America • British Trade Dollars • Variety Attribution
@messydesk
Thanks for taking the time to create that chart and post it here. It certainly makes it easier to see the minting schedule. Like you, I believe that there's a good chance that there were two instances where the same die pair was used on two days. I'd like to believe that OC-9, being the highest mintage, would have been a single-day operation. That would mean that my dollar was minted on the first day of Carson City mint operations. It's all speculation without tangible records though. Still neat to contemplate.
My Carson City Morgan Registry Set
Congratulations on purchasing a great coin! You can put me on the waiting list if you ever want to sell. LOL!
That's quite the compliment, and I appreciate it. Thanks!
My Carson City Morgan Registry Set