1875-CC

The 1875-CC stands as one of the toughest dates in the entire Carson City eagle run, a coin that quietly punishes anyone trying to assemble the With Motto series in collectable grade. Only 7,715 pieces left the Nevada mint in its sixth year of eagle production, and the survival picture is bleak: most modern estimates place between roughly 100 and 135 examples in all grades combined. The date sits in the small, brutal cluster of mid-1870s CC eagles, alongside 1872-CC, 1873-CC, and 1876-CC, that Doug Winter has long treated as the true rarities of the Carson City ten-dollar series, well above the more attainable 1871-CC, 1874-CC, and 1877-CC.

Survivors typically grade Very Fine through low Extremely Fine, and original surfaces are the exception rather than the rule, many known pieces have been cleaned, dipped, or lightly tooled at some point in their long circulation lives. Authentication starts with weight (16.718 grams, a tolerance of only a few hundredths of a gram in original strike) and specific gravity near 17.2, both of which immediately expose plated or under-alloyed counterfeits. The CC mintmark itself is the single most important diagnostic: added-mintmark fakes built on common Philadelphia 1875 hosts (a separate rarity scenario entirely) and on later, more common CC eagles do circulate, so any candidate should be examined under magnification for solder seams, mintmark alignment relative to the eagle's tail feathers, and characteristic period die-state markers in the obverse stars and reverse legend. CAC approval is meaningful here, Southgate Coins notes CAC has stickered very few 1875-CC eagles, and a recent PCGS AU-50 CAC example carried a $59,500 ask.

Auction activity tells the same story of thin supply: a GreatCollections sale in December 2025 brought a competitive 33-bid finish on an NGC AU-53 example, while CAC-stickered AU coins now press into the high five figures. For a Carson City specialist or a collector working any meaningful Liberty eagle date set, the 1875-CC is one of the unavoidable financial hurdles, and patience matters more than budget, problem-free pieces appear only every year or two. For the broader narrative arc, mint sequence, and design transitions of the issue, consult the Liberty Head Eagle series history.