1870-CC Liberty Head Double Eagle

A mint for the Comstock

The Civil War cost the federal government the mints it had operated in the South, and the West needed somewhere to turn its bullion into coin. Congress approved a branch mint at Carson City in 1865, close to the silver of the Comstock Lode, much as the San Francisco Mint had been placed to serve the California gold fields. The building was the first designed by Alfred B. Mullett after he became Supervising Architect of the Treasury.

The mint went into production on February 4, 1870, with Seated Liberty dollars. Its gold coins that year included the double eagle, the $20 piece Congress had created in the Coinage Act of 1849. Carson City delivered 3,789 of them in the four months from March through July 1870.

Few of those coins were saved. They went straight into commerce and circulated freely in the Nevada economy, and every one known today shows wear. That is the root of the date's rarity: it was a small mintage spent in a place where nobody was putting new coins aside.

The men behind the mint

Abraham Curry, known as the Father of Carson City, had served in Nevada's territorial legislature, supervised construction of the mint, and became its first superintendent when it opened. He left later in 1870 to supervise building of an engine house and machine shop for the Virginia and Truckee Railroad. When he died on October 19, 1873, the mint closed for the day in his honor.

His successor, Henry F. Rice, a former Wells Fargo express agent, ran the mint from September 1870 to May 1873. His tenure was marked by firm opposition to the mint and its continued operation.

The design on the coin came from much farther east. James B. Longacre's left-facing Liberty wears a beaded coronet inscribed LIBERTY and is said to be modeled on an old Hellenistic sculpture, the Crouching Venus. In 1866 the motto IN GOD WE TRUST was added above the eagle, creating the second of the series' three types, and the 1870-CC belongs to that type.

Nevada and the nation in 1870

Carson City's first double eagles came out in a year of national rebuilding. The Fifteenth Amendment was ratified on February 3, 1870, and that month Hiram Rhodes Revels of Mississippi became the first African American to sit in Congress. Georgia, the last former Confederate state readmitted to the Union, returned on July 15.

The country was also being knit together by rail and wire. Work on the Brooklyn Bridge began in January, and in November the new Weather Bureau issued its first official forecast. In Nevada, the Virginia and Truckee Railroad, which Curry left the mint to build for, served the mines of the Comstock.

A coin that changes hands for seven figures

Because so few exist, individual 1870-CC double eagles can be followed from sale to sale. One PCGS AU53 example passed from a private buyer in 1999 to the Nevada Collection, sold for $368,000 in January 2004, for $411,250 in March 2014 from the collection of Donald E. Bently, who owned two of them, and for $1,620,000 in November 2021.

Another, now graded PCGS AU55, appeared in the James Walter and Margaret Woolfolk Carter collections in January 1986 and sold in November 2024 for $1,440,000 from the Bernard Richards collection. A PCGS XF40 example traces back to Hirum Murdock in the 1870s and stayed in his family through four generations before it sold in October 2021 for $360,000.

The finest known coin may be gone for good. On October 17, 2011, an armored-car shipment carrying a newly discovered NGC AU58 example to an auction firm was stolen, and a $100,000 reward for its return is still offered. In December 2024 an NGC XF45 coin, the grade of this entry, sold for $312,000 at auction.

How to know an 1870-CC

Like all Liberty Head double eagles of the period, the coin weighs about 33.44 grams, measures 34 millimeters across, and is 90 percent gold and 10 percent copper. The reverse carries TWENTY D. below the eagle, with the CC mintmark beneath. Thirteen stars ring Liberty on the obverse, and thirteen more form an oval around the motto above the eagle.

Two die marriages are known. On Winter 1-A, the more common of the two among survivors, the small CC sits over the top serif of the N and the left arm of the T. On Winter 1-B, the mintmark sits mostly over the N and the gap between N and T.

Every known example is circulated, and even the finest, those graded XF45 and better, show significant marks, usually deep scratches. Collectors judge 1870-CC double eagles by how few and how small their scars are, not by any hope of finding one without them.

A landmark of Carson City gold

A Carson City collector society counts it among the four landmark rarities in the 111-piece set of Carson City coins, alongside the 1873-CC Without Arrows dime and quarter and the 1876-CC twenty-cent piece. No other date in the CC double eagle series comes close, not even the 1891-CC with its 5,000 pieces. The coin is ranked No. 75 in the fifth edition of the reference book 100 Greatest U.S. Coins (2019).

Its fame has attracted legend, too. A story published in 2000 claimed that Rice found about 3,600 defective 1870-CC double eagles hidden in a Winchester rifle crate by Curry and spirited them away in hand-built trunks. A numismatic researcher has called it a pleasant bit of fiction, and there is no evidence any of it happened.

The numbers

Mintage

3,789

Known survivors

About 55 to 65 collectible coins plus about a dozen impaired pieces; none Mint State

Weight

About 33.44 grams

Diameter

34 mm

Composition

90% gold, 10% copper

Designer

James B. Longacre

Die marriages

Two: Winter 1-A and Winter 1-B

Top population

PCGS AU55 (1) and NGC AU55 (1), as of September 2025

Timeline

1. Mar 3, 1849

   Congress authorizes the $20 double eagle.

2. 1865

   Congress approves a branch mint at Carson City; Abraham Curry is named a planning commissioner.

3. 1866

   The motto IN GOD WE TRUST is added to the double eagle, beginning Type 2.

4. Feb 4, 1870

   The Carson City Mint begins production with Seated Liberty dollars.

5. Mar 1870

   Deliveries of 1870-CC double eagles begin; 3,789 are delivered by July.

6. Sep 1870

   Henry F. Rice succeeds Curry as superintendent.

7. Oct 19, 1873

   Curry dies; the mint closes for the day in his honor.

8. Sep 11, 1885

   Carson City Mint suspends operations.

9. 1893

   The Carson City Mint strikes its last coins.

10. 2000

    A tale of 3,600 hidden 1870-CC double eagles is published; researchers later dismiss it as fiction.

11. Jan 7, 2004

    A PCGS AU53 example sells for $368,000.

12. Oct 17, 2011

    The finest known example, an NGC AU58, is stolen in transit before a January 2012 auction.

13. Nov 11, 2021

    The same PCGS AU53 sells for $1,620,000.

14. Nov 19, 2024

    A PCGS AU55 example sells for $1,440,000.

15. Dec 12, 2024

    An NGC XF45 example sells for $312,000.

The world in 1870

• Jan 3, 1870

  Construction of the Brooklyn Bridge begins.

• Jan 10, 1870

  John D. Rockefeller incorporates Standard Oil.

• Feb 3, 1870

  The Fifteenth Amendment is ratified.

• Feb 25, 1870

  Hiram Rhodes Revels is sworn in as the first African American in Congress.

• Jul 1, 1870

  The U.S. Department of Justice is established.

• Jul 15, 1870

  Georgia becomes the last former Confederate state readmitted to the Union.

• Sep 18, 1870

  Old Faithful is observed and named during the Washburn expedition to Yellowstone.

Price record

A realized auction price is what a buyer actually paid on the date shown, including the buyer's premium where the sale reported it. It is the strongest kind of reference price, and it is a record of one sale of one object on one day, not a promise of what the next example will bring.

By reference price, 1870-CC Liberty Head Double Eagle is number 50 of 100 in the coins entries of the FLOAT 100. 96 of those 100 rest on a realized sale; the rest carry an asking price or a guide value, and each page says which. Rank within the FLOAT 100 itself (72 here) is editorial: how much an object defines its field, not price alone.

Did you know

• Not a single uncirculated 1870-CC double eagle is known; every survivor saw real use in Nevada.
• The finest known example, an NGC AU58, was stolen in transit in October 2011 and has never been recovered.
• One collector, Donald E. Bently, owned two 1870-CC double eagles; both were sold in 2014.
• A PCGS XF40 example stayed in one Nevada-era family for more than a century, from Hirum Murdock in the 1870s to its sale in 2021.
• The Carson City Mint's first superintendent, Abraham Curry, was so honored that the mint shut for the day of his death in 1873.