Jeff Ambio: The obverse die of the 1889-CC double eagle exhibits a small, widely spaced date that is placed just a bit low in the field. The CC mintmark is large, compact and offset to the viewer's right. The first C is centered over the space between the words TWENTY and DOLLARS, while the second C is over the extreme left edge of the letter D in DOLLAR.

Rusty Goe: Residents of Nevada, and especially those in Carson City, had despised Grover Cleveland because of his anti-silver policy, and because his administration had all but closed down the local mint. The inauguration of Benjamin Harrison as president in March 1889 brought much relief to the Silver State.

Six weeks after Harrison had assumed his position in the White House, Nevada's U.S. Senator William M. Stewart, sent a letter to the president's new Treasury Secretary, William Windom, in defense of the Carson Mint. Using quotes from official U.S. documents, Stewart summarized the mint's history. He cited Carson City's superior climate, in comparison to those at New York, Philadelphia, and New Orleans, the cheaper cost of labor in Nevada, and the first-class conditions of the mint's building, machinery, and appliances. On May 23, 1889, the Nevada State Journal praised Stewart's Republican colleague in the Senate, John P. Jones, for joining Stewart in the fight to move the Treasury Department to reopen the local coin factory.

In his 1889 annual report, the newly-appointed Mint Director, Edward O. Leech wrote the words that Carsonites had waited over four years to read: "Since the commencement of the present fiscal year, the Mint at Carson has been reopened for coinage and is now in full operation." The Mint's new staff included Melter-Refiner E.B. Zabriskie Chief Assayer Pearis B. Ellis, and new coiner, Charles H. Colburn.

Colburn, just as Levi Dague had done in 1885, made only silver dollars and $20 gold pieces in 1889, emitting 30,945 double eagles before December.

The survival rate of about four to five percent of the original mintage places the 1889-CC double eagle a little higher in this category than some of the other dates.

One example, the finest known survivor, never did leave the country. In fact, it probably never left northern Nevada. Purportedly, an old-time bottle collector, while scavenging for his favorite relics, found a stash of various gold pieces under an outhouse somewhere amid Nevada's sagebrush (for obvious reasons he never revealed the location). In his discovered cache was an 1889-CC $20 gold piece. He used it in payment, sometime in the 1980s, for work a furniture restoration man did for him. That furniture restorer held on to it for about four years, until he sold it to a dealer at a coin show in South Lake Tahoe, Nevada. The dealer submitted it to PCGS, where it received a grade of MS-63. Upon resubmission, PCGS upgraded it to the MS-64 condition rating, which it retains today.

Q. David Bowers: After the resumption of Carson City coinage in 1889, there were 30,945 double eagles struck there. Rusty Goe estimates 1,340 to 1,425 exist, of which 175 to 195 are Uncirculated. My files suggest numbers slightly below this range.

EF and AU are the grades normally seen. This is one of the more readily available Carson City double eagles, although it can still be considered somewhat scarce in relation to coinage from other mints.

Thus began the later generation of Carson City double eagles. This coinage circulated extensively in the West and also was used in the export trade. It is likely that exportation took place in the early 1890s after most pieces had become slightly worn. Until James F. Kelly (in particular, but there were others) began importing scarce double eagles in quantities in the 1950s, the usually seen 1889-CC was apt to be VF, sometimes EF, but hardly ever AU.

The example to the left was sold by Stack's Bowers Galleries in the Winter 2014 Baltimore Auction, where it realized $52,875.