Jeff Ambio: All known 1877-CC half eagles were struck from a single obverse die, leaving it to the reverse to differentiate between the two reported varieties. On Winter 1-B, the mintmark is level with the first C over the left side of the letter V in FIVE and the second C over the junction between the letters VE in the same word. (On the other known reverse, the mintmark is uneven with the second C much lower than the first.)

Rusty Goe: From the time President Grant had signed the Coinage Act of 1873 into law until mid-year 1877, the three working mints in the U.S. had produced about $166 million in gold coins, more than in any other four-fiscal-year run in the nation's history. To supplement the gold supply, the mints, thanks largely to the Specie Resumption Act's influence beginning in 1875, had delivered between 1873 and 1877 only $6 million less than the combined total of silver coins produced from 1850 to 1873.

Mint Director H.R. Linderman, in his 1877 annual mint report, laid the groundwork for the resumption of coining standard silver dollars. He reiterated his conviction that an "adherence to gold as the standard of value, and [the] money [for use in] large payments," best suited the U.S. monetary system. He said, "The cost of coining a silver dollar will be about the same as that of a twenty, ten, or five-dollar gold piece," but "the execution of a large silver coinage" would cost "about four times the expense of a corresponding value in gold coins of different denominations." He claimed that one of the benefits of resuming the coinage of standard dollars would be the stabilization of the value of silver. Additionally, he said, it would "protect our important silver-mining interests."

A problem with the new dies sent from Philadelphia prevented the San Francisco and Carson City mints from turning out gold coins in January 1877. By February the workers at the California branch had overcome the difficulties in the coining department and had begun to stamp four denominations of gold coins at a quickened pace.

Meanwhile, the coin die predicament persisted at Carson City, delaying gold coin output until April. The Carson Mint's coiner, Levi Dague, and his assistants remedied the situation and managed to turn out several runs of double eagles before operations ceased in June for annual cleanup time. Dague's department delivered 8,680 half eagles in August, the only run of that denomination for 1877.

Q. David Bowers: Rusty Goe estimates 150 to 195 exist in total with three or four Uncirculated, this being more liberal than my view. I was only able to find a single Mint State coin. The 1877-CC when found, is usually in VF or lower grades:

The example to the left was sold by Stack's Bowers Galleries in the Fairmont Collection, Hendricks Set, where it realized $28,800.