Jeff Ambio: There are two known die pairings of the 1870-CC double eagle, of which Winter 1-A is the more frequently encountered among surviving examples. On the obverse, the date is large, boldly impressed and placed much closer to the base of Liberty's portrait than the denticles. The digit 1 is very close to the neck, in fact, although it does not touch it. The CC mintmark on the reverse is small, compact and placed close to the eagle's tail feathers. The first C is over the right edge of the letter N in TWENTY and the second C is over the left flag of the second letter T.

In addition to being the rarest Carson City Mint double eagle, the 1870-CC is also the most difficult to obtain with strong eye appeal. The obverse is always softly impressed to one degree or another, especially over stars 1-7 as well the high points of Liberty's portrait.

Rusty Goe: Royalty graces the kingdom of Carson City coins. The series boasts of a king and a queen, a princess, and a duke. Numismatists often refer to the 1870-CC $20 gold piece as the "Queen of Carson City gold coins." The connection between rich mineral discoveries in California and the introduction of the largest gold denomination in the nation's money supply, and Nevada's Comstock Lode played roles in bringing forth the Carson City Mint's famous double eagle of 1870.

As the nation expanded in the first five decades of the 1800s and enterprising miners discovered precious metals in distant locations, the concept of branch mints near these discoveries became a reality.

Sixty-five years after the Philadelphia Mint had struck its first half cents in 1793, frontier settlers built a town in a remote section of the then-western portion of Utah Territory, and they named it Carson City, after the legendary scout, Kit Carson, whose name people in the region considered sacred (Carson River, Carson Valley, Carson Pass, just to list a few examples). From the small hamlet's humble beginning in the second half of 1858, it took a little less than 12 years for the U.S. government to open a branch mint there.

After having struck the first silver dollars, gold eagles and half eagles, it was time for the Carson Mint to deliver a fourth denomination, probably the one workers there had most anticipated. In 1867, the branch's superintendent, Abraham Curry, had promised that "$20 gold pieces would be as plentiful as blackberries" as soon the Carson Mint opened for business. He and his team stared in amazement on March 10, 1870 at the 1,332 sparkling new 1870-CC double eagles. We don't know all the details about what took place in the coining room at the nativity of those large discs with their romantic flare and many historical overtones. Yet there are indications that technical problems occurred, at least during the striking of some of those first-year double eagles; not one 1870-CC $20 gold piece survives today that looks as if Coiner Ezra Staley scored a virtuoso performance. Nevertheless, it is almost certain that Curry's chest swelled with pride. The striking of this denomination, the one used in bank-to-bank transfers, large transactions such as real estate sales, and in international settlements, brought legitimacy to the new local mint, even if the quantity was meager and the quality lacked mastery.

After Curry and Staley had delivered the first 1,332 1870-CC double eagles, they only delivered 1,997 more of the big coins before June 30 that year. Gold deposits at the Carson Mint amounted to slightly more than $124,000 during the first half of 1870, a modest sum, especially when compared to those at the Philadelphia and San Francisco mints and the New York Assay Office, but adequate enough to jumpstart operations. By the close of the fiscal year, on June 30, 1870, Curry and his crew had delivered $110,576.05 in face value of gold pieces divided between the three denominations, and one three-and-a-third-ounce gold bar whose value was stamped as $66.05. (What a rarity that bar would be if it survived into the 21st century!)

The Carson Mint would add only 460 more double eagles in the last six months of 1870, bringing the annual output to 3,789, the lowest total out of 19 years of production of this denomination of "CC" coins. The following list compares the double eagle allocations for the three mints that struck this denomination in 1870:

Three dates from the New Orleans Mint and five from the Philadelphia Mint (unless we factor in the elusive Paquet Reverse specimens) boast of lower mintages of business strike double eagles than the Carson City Mint in 1870, as can be seen in the following table:

Date Mintage
1854-O 3,250
1856-O 2,250
1879-O 2,325
1881 2,199
1882 571
1885 751
1886 1,000
1891 1,390

Price Levels Escalate
By the mid-1970s, prices for the "Queen of Carson City gold coins" had broken the $10,000 price barrier. Bowers and Ruddy, in their June 1976 auction, sold the 1870-CC double eagle from the nearly complete collection of "CC" coins — both silver and gold — owned by E.A. Carson for $12,500. This same piece can be traced back to Kosoff's 1968 Shuford sale.

The 1980s ushered in a new wave of enthusiasm for coin collecting, thanks in part to an unprecedented rise in precious metals prices from 1979 to early 1980. Yet by the time that Bowers and Ruddy prepared to auction off the gold portion of the Eliasberg collection in October 1982, a severe recession gripped world economies. Still, many price records were set. Someone paid $22,000 (not a record) for Eliasberg's 1870-CC $20 gold piece, which he had reportedly bought 36 years earlier for $275.

On July 31, 2002, Bowers and Merena auctioned the Henry S. Lang 1870-CC double eagle, graded PCGS XF-40, for $149,500. In January 2004, alarm bells sounded from Florida to Nevada, when an AU-53 1870-CC $20 gold piece, graded by PCGS, soared to a show-stopping, unprecedented price realized of $368,000.

By 2007, the starting price for any AU-graded 1870-CC double eagle had drifted above the $400,000 mark. Over the past 30 years (as of 2012), the prices for 1870-CC $20 gold pieces have rocketed to previously unfathomable levels. The Great Recession years (late 2008 through 2011), saw a mild correction in prices for the 1870-CC double eagles. The "Queen's" legendary history will surely sustain its status as one of the most desirable issues in a person's portfolio. Condition rarities will of course lead the way in terms of value.

Q. David Bowers: From a mintage of 3,789 1870-CC double eagles, Rusty Goe estimates 55 to 65 exist, with either none or one Uncirculated.

In the early years of 1870, 1871, and 1872, distribution of double eagles seems to have been strictly local and regional, with relatively few finding their way into export channels. Twenties of these three years are customarily seen quite worn.

The first coinage of 1,332 pieces was delivered on March 10, 1870; this was precisely one month after the first silver coins, Liberty Seated dollars, were first struck at Carson City.

The example to the left was sold by Stack's Bowers Galleries in the Fairmont Collection, Hendricks Set, where it realized $810,000.