1884-CC Morgan $1 CC Coin of the Week 4-25-2010

Sorry friends, I am mortified. I was looking at an outdated list and did not know I was next up.

The 1884-CC is the last of the three consecutive years in the 1880's when mintages topped 1M coins. The coins were also well represented in the GSA sales. Despite the high mintage numbers, there are only 10 die marriages known for '84-CC dollars, with 4 more varieties added to account for various die breaks. One of the more popular varieties is the VAM 5, which has a doubled CC mint mark. It appears that the original mint mark was polished off and repunched.


NGC populations indicate 1,239 in DMPL in all grades up thru MS67.

1884 also marked the last hurrah for James Crawford as Superintendent as he passed away in 1885.

More later, guys, happy collecting.

Since nearly all of the original mintage exists today in Mint State: over a million in all does this make 1884-CC $1 a "Bozo" coin? This is the largest surviving population of any Carson City dollar.

For the discriminating collector there is a niche: prooflike and cameo coins. Especially cameos are among the most beautiful in the entire Morgan series, according to the experts.

My best example of 1884-CC $1 is a mere MS64 DMPL.

Can anyone show us a true cameo?

John Armonas

I have a PCGS 63 DMPL, but no photo of it.

Gar,

My fault too Gar, I should have sent you a reminder. Regardless, please go ahead and post an article about the 1884-CC Morgan silver dollar as soon as you are able. Your posting will be no less interesting on Tuesday or Wednesday than it would have been on Sunday.

Rusty Goe points out in the "Mint On Carson Street" that nearly every one of the 1,136,000, 1884-CC Morgan silver dollars were stored in Treasury vaults due to an ever increasing glut of silver dollars that was forming at the time. Perhaps no more than 5% were distributed to the public. Rusty goes on to say, and I quote;

"This percentage of extant surviving dollars is the largest of any coin from the pre-1950 era".

Clearly, 21st century collectors benefited from this overabundance as these coins turned out to be an important part of the GSA hoard distributed almost a century later.

One of the flagship coins in my entire coin collection just happens to be an 1884-CC Morgan. Below is a photo of my 1884-CC MS-67 DMPL PCGS from the "Gift of Undeserved Favor Collection". The photographic image is nice but, frankly, it is almost impossible to capture the depth of the mirror-like surfaces on this coin with a camera.

John asked, "Can anyone show us a true cameo?" Here you go!


The coin now resides in the "Rians Bequeath Collection".

Belay Off

Thanks for adding the GSA information, Belay. I did not have "the book" at hand when I wrote my article. Always nice to see that beautiful '84-CC.

Thanks Gar...I've got your back!

Belay Off