Rusty Goe: When calculated by piece-count, dimes dominated coinage output at the Carson City Mint, when government officials tallied all of the production at that facility after it ceased its coining operations in 1893. Nearly 21 million pieces of the smallest denomination manufactured in Carson City poured out over an eight-year span (1871 to 1878). The face value only amounted to about $2,090,000, which, except for the two-year run of twenty-cent pieces, represents the lowest total of all denominations issued by that coin plant.

Regardless of how much the dimes were worth in circulation, to mint workers they meant steady employment, and dimes required just as much effort -- if not more because of the time required to count them -- to make, store, and ship as did other denominations. The Specie Resumption Act-inspired and Comstock's Big Bonanza-fueled amazing production run, from 1875 to 1877, accounted for the manufacture of 98.6 percent of all "CC" dimes ever coined. The 1877 output of 7.7 million pieces came within 93 percent of the record yield of 1876. This total from 1877 also ranked it above that year's mintages of the denomination from the coin factories at Philadelphia and San Francisco.

Carson City's newspaper reporters seized every opportunity to herald the staggering quantities of coins coming out of that stately sandstone building on North Carson Street. In April 1877, for instance, about two million coins rattled off the mint's three presses; 980,000 of them were dimes. In September of that year a reporter at the Carson Appeal wrote about his experience of seeing "52 boxes of dimes, containing 1,040,000 pieces, valued at $104,000" stacked in a hallway awaiting to be shipped to several out-of-state destinations.

Thanks to the prolific outputs of the three heaviest production years at the Carson City Mint, collectors today will have no trouble finding a dime dated 1875, 1876, or 1877. Even if only one quarter of one percent (.25 percent) of the original mintages survives, there are thousands to choose from. The 1877-CC dime is slightly more available than 1876-CC, although the survival populations for both are very close.

Q. David Bowers: The 1877-CC is the second most plentiful dime from this mint, after 1876-CC. As might be expected examples are plentiful in the numismatic market, including in Mint State grades. The production was done with enthusiasm in anticipation of a wide public demand for silver coins (that did not materialize, as noted earlier). As is true of many high volume mintages of Carson City and elsewhere, multiple dies were used. For this dime, under magnification at least five different variations in the mintmark placement can be found. However, dedicated collectors for such things are rare, and even the most elusive dies are common in comparison, so there is no premium placed on them.

The example to the left was sold by Stack's Bowers Galleries in the November 2012 Baltimore Auction, where it realized $4,993.