Jeff Ambio: A thin die line that bisects the letters RTY in LIBERTY is diagnostic of the only known obverse die of this issue. The date is large and slants down to the viewer's right. On the reverse, the CC mintmark is tall and rather widely spaced. The first C is nearly centered over the letter V in FIVE while the second C is positioned over the left half of the upright of the letter E in the same word.

Rusty Goe: Carrying forward into 1884 from the previous year, the Carson Mint was receiving enough gold deposits to allow its coining department to make $1.5 million in half eagles, eagles, and double eagles, on average annually between 1883 and 1884. Except for a minimal output of double eagles in the work-shortened year of 1885, 1884 would close out the first phase of gold coinage production for the Carson Mint's first 15 years in business. It delivered half eagles annually over the course of that entire decade and a half, one of only two denominations to claim that distinction (gold eagles the other).

By 1884, both of the two smaller gold coin denominations had resumed their back-seat position behind the predominant and always in demand double eagle. In an almost repeat performance of what had occurred the previous year, the coining department did not produce any half eagles in the first four months of 1884. Then in May, Coiner Dague delivered 11,000 examples of the $5 gold piece, the first and only run in the first half of the year. At one point between July and December, the last 5,402 1884-CC half eagles were coined, bringing the annual output to 16,402. No more examples of this denomination would come out of the Carson City Mint for almost six years.

Q. David Bowers: From a mintage of 16,402 1884-CC half eagles, Rusty Goe estimates 250 to 300 in total are known today with 10 to 12 Uncirculated. My estimates are more conservative. Again, by any evaluation the 1884-CC is scarce, and at the AU or higher level it can be rated as rare. Douglas Winter and Lawrence Cutler called this the second rarest of the Carson City half eagles after 1878, second only to the 1881-CC. What a contrast the $5 (and $10) Carson City gold coins of the 1880s are to Morgan dollars of the same years! If 10 new buyers for CC half eagles were to enter the market today, prices would double! For Morgan dollars there would be not even a ripple. Such things are interesting to think about.

The example to the left was sold by Stack's Bowers Galleries in the 2007 Americana Auction, where it realized $29,900.