1878-CC

Among the seven Carson City Liberty double eagles minted between 1870 and 1893, the 1878-CC occupies a peculiar second-place position. Its mintage of 13,180 pieces sits below every other CC twenty except the legendary 1870-CC (3,789), and even undercuts the 1871-CC (14,687) by roughly 1,500 coins. That figure earns it permanent membership in what Doug Winter has long called the "Big Five" Carson City double eagles, alongside the 1870-CC, 1871-CC, 1879-CC, and 1891-CC. The 1878-CC is the date most advanced collectors confront after they have secured the more available CC issues and finally accept that completing the seven-coin set will demand serious money.

Survival is poor in absolute terms and brutal in high grade. Q. David Bowers estimates roughly 250 to 350 survivors across all conditions, with no more than five to eight pieces meriting Mint State. Winter, writing in 2019, counted just six PCGS-graded uncirculated examples, and noted that no MS coin had crossed an auction block since the Battle Born NGC MS61 sold in 2012. Most surviving 1878-CCs land in the VF to EF range, where weak strikes, scattered marks, and the heavy bagmarking typical of frontier-mint gold are the rule rather than the exception. Properly graded AU55 to AU58 examples are genuinely difficult, and a Heritage sale of a PCGS AU55 at $54,000 in August 2017 illustrates what the market pays when one surfaces.

Strike quality on this issue tracks the broader CC pattern: softness on the radial points of Liberty's coronet stars, on the eagle's neck feathers, and on the upper shield lines, with reverse die polish lines often visible in the fields. Authentication deserves real attention. Added-CC mintmark fraud is a documented hazard across Carson City gold, and the price gap between a common-date 1878 Philadelphia double eagle and an 1878-CC gives forgers obvious motive, so any candidate coin should show a tooled-free, properly seated mintmark and ideally carry PCGS or NGC certification. For broader context on the design, market hierarchy, and the place of CC keys within the series, see our Liberty Head Double Eagle series history.