Jeff Ambio: All known 1871-CC Liberty Seated quarters are of a Repunched Date variety with repunching evident on both the first and final digits in the date. Additional diagnostics of this obverse are two tiny die rust lumps in the drapery of Liberty's gown to the right of the letter Y in LIBERTY. The reverse die is the same used at the Carson City Mint to strike all known 1870-CC, 1872-CC and 1873-CC Arrows quarters.

Rusty Goe: The Carson City Mint struck 10,890 quarters dated 1871 that would decades later be targeted by collectors as key rarities. The coiner, who had not struck examples of this denomination since August 1870, delivered the first 3,490 of them for 1871 on February 2. Coiner Granville Hosmer minted another 2,400 quarters in August, and added the final 5,000 pieces at the end of September.

Hosmer's boss, Superintendent Henry F. Rice, who had replaced Abraham Curry in September 1870, wrote in his report to Mint Director James Pollock that business had increased at the Carson Mint because the U.S. government had authorized a bullion fund for it. As ore output had consistently escalated in northwestern Nevada, miners were enticed to bring it to their local mint if they could get paid for a portion of their deposit on the spot. Director Pollock wrote in his annual report for 1871 that the bullion fund and the granting of "full authority ... to melt, assay, and stamp gold and silver bullion, and return the same to depositors in unparted bars, bearing the Government stamp of weight and fineness," had "largely increased [the Carson Mint's] business and added to its usefulness."

Even with the spike in bullion deliveries in its second year in operation, the Carson Mint saw limited coinage output. It returned unparted bars for bullion deposited at a ratio of over four to one over its yield of coins. Still, its aggregate mintage of 214,958 pieces, divided between seven denominations, more than doubled the production of 1870.

While all coins dated 1871-CC are scarce today, the quarters from that year deserve special recognition. Of the paltry population that survives, fewer than 18 or so pieces qualify for condition ratings above Fine.

Even in the ranks of such rarity, three specimens (Stack, Eliasberg, and Norweb) rise to the top of the condition census and leave collectors speechless.

Q. David Bowers: The 1871-CC quarter follows suit with the 1870-CC in many regards. The mintage was low -- just 10,890 for this year -- and relatively few survive today. Rusty Goe places the number at 35 to 50, with perhaps just three or four known at the Mint State level. There was little demand for coins of such a small denomination. In addition, the San Francisco Mint produced quarter dollars in this era, also in rather reduced quantities (but far more than in Carson City). As is true of other Carson City silver, there was no numismatic interest in the 1871-CC quarters and the survival of high grade examples was a matter of rare chance. Today, a nice VF or EF 1871-CC quarter is about top of the line in reality for an advanced collector.

The example to the left was sold by Stack's Bowers Galleries in the August 2012 Battle Born Collection of Carson City Coinage, where it realized $352,500.