Jeff Ambio: The only known die marriage for the 1882-CC half eagle exhibits a centrally placed, level date on the obverse and a tall, relatively widely spaced CC mintmark positioned over the letter V in FIVE on the reverse.

Rusty Goe: After surviving the past three years of intermittent operations, the Carson Mint looked forward to having all of its departments running at full capacity all the way through 1882. Much of that would depend on a cooperative constituency at the Treasury and a steady supply of fresh bullion. In his annual report, published in October 1882, Mint Director Horatio Burchard gave a brief but favorable review of the Carson Mint's performance through the first nine months of the year. It had in fact remained in continuous operation mostly because "the difficulty in procuring silver for coinage was less than that experienced in former years." The director also noted that the Carson Mint's production level of coinage had increased substantially from the preceding year. His valuation of a doubling of the output reflected on his use of fiscal-year statistics. When viewed through a calendar-year lens, the output of coins, in terms of face value and quantity, nearly quadrupled in 1882.

Production of gold double eagles resumed in Carson City that year, which might lead us to the conclusion that the yield on half eagles declined. The numbers, however, speak clearly to the contrary. The coiners at the Carson Mint turned out the highest quantity of $5 gold pieces in that institution's 13-year history up to that time. The mintage figure for 1882 would go on to rank third overall for the 19 years half eagles were produced at that plant.

Coiner Levi Dague and his staff got busy in the first month of the year in the making of half eagles, and by mid-year in 1882 had banged out 42,200 pieces. They nearly matched that number in the second half of the year, emitting 40,617 of the small-denomination gold coins, with the final 6,417 examples delivered in December. Of the 82,817 1882-CC half eagles minted, possibly one to one and a quarter percent survives.

Q. David Bowers: The 1882-CC mintage of half eagles was 82,817 pieces, of which Rusty Goe estimates 750 to 950 exist in total, 40 to 50 in Mint State. My estimate based on old-time grading is more conservative with 225 to 300 circulated and only about half of his Mint State number, taking into account a small group of 1882-CC half eagles found in Europe (not a usual source) in 1994 and reported to have at least a half dozen in low Mint State ranges. Scattered Mint State listings can be found in some early listings including the 1914 William F. Gable Collection (S.H. Chapman) and in an early fixed price list issued by Moritz Wormser in September 1937, not long after he formed the New Netherlands Coin Co. (He should have had it as Netherland, singular, but did not realize the error until advertisements had been placed and stationery printed).

The example to the left was sold by Stack's Bowers Galleries in the Fairmont Collection, CAG Set, where it realized $24,000.