Jeff Ambio: This is an interesting issue for die variety specialists, with at least six different combinations reported using two obverse and four reverse dies. The 1874-CC half eagle is a major rarity in Mint State with just two or three coins known.

Rusty Goe: The Nevada State Journal on May 14, 1874, said that "although [Nevada] is supposed to be purely a land of silver," the current mining statistics revealed that the Carson City Mint had been receiving nearly an equal amount of gold deposits.

The Comstock Lode in 1874 was about to erupt with a torrent of precious metals the likes of which the United States had never seen. A journalist at San Francisco's Daily Alta on July 20, 1874, summarized what had happened on the Comstock up to that point and lauded the Lode's significance to the nation, and to Nevada. He called the Lode, "one of the great factors of national prosperity."

Half eagle production, which had sunk to a four-year low in 1873, rebounded nicely in 1874. The coining department delivered 21,198 pieces, nearly tripling the output from the previous year and setting the high-water mark for the decade in this denomination

The splendid example offered here in the Battle Born collection is tied for finest-known honors with one other specimen. Mr. Battle Born bought this MS-62 piece back during the early years of the formation of his collection.

Q. David Bowers: Of the 1874-CC half eagles struck, Rusty Goe estimates that 200 to 250 survive, with three or four in Mint State. My estimates rank the variety as being rarer, with two or three at low Mint State levels and 80 to 120 in circulated levels. Once again here is an issue that was not exported (and thus not a candidate to be saved in quantity by an overseas repository). These were workhorse coins, mainstays in local commerce where paper money was never seen and commerce was done with gold and silver.

The example to the left was sold by Stack's Bowers Galleries in the March 2018 Baltimore Auction, where it realized $90,000.