1878-CC

Only 3,244 eagles left the Carson City presses in 1878, the entire annual delivery completed sometime after July of that year and the smallest with-motto $10 production any branch mint had recorded to that point. The figure sits below 1877-CC, below 1879-CC, and below every CC half eagle of the decade, a ninth-year issue produced as Comstock bullion flow was thinning and federal demand for branch-mint eagles was sliding toward the marginal. Survivors carry the look of coins that worked: heavy abrasion from western commerce, patches of reflective field where dies were polished and reused, and the faint clashing that recurs across late-1870s Carson City output.

For the buyer, this is a date measured in tens, not hundreds. Stack's Bowers estimates roughly 60 to 90 examples survive across all grades, with the realistic ceiling sitting in the EF45 to AU53 corridor, combined PCGS and NGC certifications show only a small handful in About Uncirculated and effectively nothing in Mint State, with PCGS still without a single MS-graded coin on the books. The August 2012 Battle Born Collection sale at Stack's Bowers Galleries realized $82,250 for a high-end example and remains a useful benchmark. Authentication discipline is non-negotiable: weight must hit the 16.718-gram standard within roughly 0.05 grams, specific gravity should land near 17.2 for the .900 fine alloy, and the CC mintmark, small, neatly punched between the eagle's tail feathers and the denomination, needs magnification to rule out added-mintmark fakes built on common-date Philadelphia hosts. Look for soldering scars, abnormal mintmark height, or a margin that doesn't quite meet the surrounding field. The reverse clashing on legitimate examples is itself a quiet authenticity tell.

Doug Winter slots the 1878-CC among the lower-tier survivors of the CC eagle set, once treated as a headline key, now ranked just behind the 1870-CC, 1879-CC, 1877-CC, 1873-CC, and 1875-CC depending on which census is weighted, but still genuinely rare and prohibitively so above EF. A problem-free, originally surfaced piece in upper EF or low AU is one of the harder acquisitions in the entire $10 series, and patience is the only sensible posture: original color, even wear, undisturbed fields. Series context for the Type 2 with-motto issues lives in the Liberty Head Eagle series history.