FEBRUARY 10
1870•1870-CC Seated Liberty Dollar / Carson City Mint
1883•Liberty Head Nickel: Counterfeiting Warning
The First “CC” Coins Are Struck at the Carson City Mint
On February 10, 1870, the Carson City Mint struck its first coins: 3,747 Seated Liberty silver dollars bearing the new “CC” mintmark. Born from Nevada’s Comstock Lode and years of political pressure for a federal mint near the western silver mines, the event launched one of the most celebrated mintmarks in American numismatics. The first formal delivery followed on February 11, but February 10 was the day Coin Press No. 1 finally began turning Nevada silver into United States coins.
◆
Two small letters changed American coinage history on February 10, 1870.
CC.
They appeared beneath the eagle on a Seated Liberty silver dollar and identified a new branch of the United States Mint in Carson City, Nevada.
The first day's production was modest by later standards: 3,747 silver dollars.
But those coins marked the beginning of a mint whose output would become legendary among collectors.
Carson City would eventually strike silver and gold denominations ranging from dimes to twenty-dollar gold pieces. Its Morgan dollars would become especially famous. Some Carson City issues would become major rarities.
Every one of those later coins traces its lineage back to the Seated Liberty dollars struck on February 10, 1870.
The Comstock Lode Changes Nevada
The Carson City Mint existed because of silver.
In 1859, extraordinarily rich silver deposits were discovered in western Nevada in what became known as the Comstock Lode.
The strike transformed the region.
Mining camps expanded into towns. Fortunes were made and lost. Mills, roads, railroads, banks and businesses grew around the extraction and processing of ore.
Huge quantities of precious metal were being produced far from the major federal mints in the East.
Transporting bullion long distances was expensive and risky.
Western miners and businessmen wanted a federal mint close to the source.
Congress Authorizes a Nevada Mint
Congress responded during the Civil War.
An act approved March 3, 1863 authorized a branch mint in the Territory of Nevada.
The decision came before Nevada became a state in 1864.
Carson City was chosen as the location.
One of the most influential figures behind the project was Abraham Curry, often called the founder of Carson City.
Curry sold land to the federal government for the mint site and later became the facility's first superintendent.
His involvement would extend all the way to the first coinage.
Constructing a working mint in Nevada was not simple.
The sandstone building was designed under the direction of Treasury architect Alfred B. Mullett.
Construction began in the 1860s, but costs and delays mounted.
The facility was largely ready by 1869.
Coining machinery had arrived.
Workers were prepared.
Yet the mint could not strike coins without dies.
Even after years of political effort and construction, the final step depended on engraved steel traveling west from Philadelphia.
Every branch mint needed a way to identify its coins.
Carson City's solution became one of the most famous mintmarks in American collecting:
CC
A single C could have been confusing because Charlotte, North Carolina, had previously used C on its gold coins.
The paired letters clearly identified Carson City.
On the 1870 silver dollar, the CC appears on the reverse beneath the eagle.
For collectors today, those two letters often create immediate excitement.
In 1870, they were brand new.
Why a Silver Dollar Came First
The first Carson City coins were Seated Liberty silver dollars.
The choice made sense in a region transformed by silver mining.
The standard silver dollar still contained the traditional statutory quantity of silver. Unlike subsidiary silver denominations that had been reduced in weight in 1853, the dollar remained tied to its older standard.
Bullion depositors could have strong reasons to request dollars.
The denomination also provided an appropriately dramatic debut for a mint established largely to serve the precious-metal economy of Nevada.
On February 10, the long wait ended.
A six-ton Morgan & Orr coining press manufactured in Philadelphia struck the first Carson City coins.
Collectors now know that historic machine as Coin Press No. 1.
The day's production totaled 3,747 Seated Liberty silver dollars.
Each carried the date 1870.
Each bore the CC mintmark.
For the first time, a federal coin had been struck in Nevada.
An important distinction survives in the production records.
The coins were struck on February 10.
The first formal delivery occurred on February 11.
PCGS historical research records a February 11 delivery associated with Andrew Wright, a watchman or guard at the Mint. Three pieces were also reserved for the annual Assay Commission.
This difference between striking date and delivery date helps explain why historical references do not always give the same “first coin” date.
For a coin-history calendar, February 10 marks the actual beginning of coinage production at Carson City.
Even official modern summaries are not perfectly consistent.
A United States Mint history article states that Carson City's Seated Liberty dollars rolled off Press No. 1 on February 11, 1870.
Detailed numismatic production records published by PCGS, however, identify February 10 as the striking date for 3,747 pieces and February 11 as the first delivery.
That February 10 production date is also widely used in specialist Carson City scholarship.
Rather than treating the two dates as interchangeable, the distinction is useful: February 10 was production; February 11 was delivery.
The Seated Liberty Dollar
The design itself was already familiar when Carson City began using it.
Christian Gobrecht's Seated Liberty motif had appeared on United States silver coinage beginning in the 1830s.
On the dollar, Liberty sits on a rock holding a pole topped by a Liberty cap. Her other hand supports a shield inscribed LIBERTY.
Thirteen stars surround the figure, representing the original states.
The date appears below.
The reverse features a heraldic eagle with a shield on its breast, arrows and an olive branch in its talons, and the inscriptions UNITED STATES OF AMERICA and ONE DOL.
On the Carson City issue, the new CC mintmark appears beneath the eagle.
The first-year Carson City dollar is now known simply as the 1870-CC Seated Liberty dollar.
Its total annual mintage was only 11,758 pieces.
That is tiny compared with the millions of Morgan dollars Carson City would strike in later years.
Yet within the short series of Carson City Seated dollars, the 1870-CC is the foundational issue.
It is the coin that introduced the CC mintmark.
Surviving 1870-CC dollars often tell two competing stories through their surfaces.
Specialist references note that many were struck with reflective or prooflike qualities.
At the same time, the coins could acquire substantial contact marks during handling and transportation.
Coins were stored in cloth bags and transported over rough western roads.
Heavy silver dollars striking one another inside a bag could quickly accumulate marks.
This helps explain why a coin can have strong underlying reflectivity yet still show obvious evidence of rough handling.
From Carson City to Reno
Coin distribution in 1870 was a physical undertaking.
There were no armored trucks or modern logistics networks.
Coins leaving Carson City could travel by horse-drawn wagon roughly thirty miles to the rail connection at Reno.
From there they could move farther into the national financial system.
Every step exposed heavy bags of silver dollars to motion and impact.
The journey from press to bank could leave visible evidence on the coins before they ever entered normal circulation.
People recognized that the new Carson City dollars were special.
They were the first coins from a new federal mint and the first to carry the CC mark.
Contemporary reports described interest in the pieces, and some were kept as souvenirs or pocket pieces.
That early saving is one reason any survive today.
Even so, Mint State examples remain scarce, and high-grade coins are prized by specialists.
The Seated Liberty dollar was only the beginning.
Carson City soon began striking gold.
In February 1870, the Mint added the ten-dollar eagle, and other gold denominations followed.
Quarter dollars and half dollars also entered production during the year.
The facility was becoming what Nevada's mining interests had wanted: a working federal mint capable of converting western bullion into national coinage.
Carson City's location gave its coins a special connection to the American West.
Philadelphia coinage was associated with the nation's first mint and federal capital history.
New Orleans reflected Gulf commerce and southern precious-metal flows.
San Francisco was born from the California Gold Rush.
Carson City was inseparable from the Comstock Lode.
Its very existence was a federal response to western mining.
That connection gives CC coins a regional identity unusually strong even among branch-mint issues.
The Morgan Dollar Makes “CC” Famous
The CC mintmark became even more famous after 1878.
That year, production began on the new Morgan silver dollar.
Carson City struck Morgan dollars from 1878 through 1885 and again from 1889 through 1893.
Today, Carson City Morgan dollars are among the most widely collected nineteenth-century United States coins.
Their fame can overshadow the earlier Seated Liberty dollars.
But the Morgan dollar did not introduce CC.
The 1870 Seated dollar did.
Remarkably, the press that struck those first coins survives.
The Morgan & Orr press continued working at Carson City through the mint's coinage years.
It later traveled through the federal Mint system, including service at Philadelphia and San Francisco.
Eventually it returned to Carson City.
Today, the historic building houses the Nevada State Museum, and Coin Press No. 1 remains one of its great artifacts.
The machine is not merely the same type of press used in 1870.
It is the press associated with the first CC coinage itself.
Carson City never enjoyed uninterrupted production.
Coinage ran from 1870 until 1885, stopped for several years, resumed in 1889, and ended permanently in 1893.
The facility's formal mint status was later withdrawn, and it continued as an assay office until 1933.
The building was sold to Nevada in 1939.
Its relatively short and irregular coinage career contributed to the scarcity of many CC issues.
It also created a finite collecting universe with a powerful identity.
During its years of coinage, Carson City produced eight denominations.
They included dimes, twenty-cent pieces, quarters, half dollars, Trade dollars, standard silver dollars, half eagles, eagles and double eagles across different periods of operation.
Some issues are readily collectible.
Others are legendary rarities.
What unites them is the CC.
For collectors, a mintmark only two letters long can evoke Nevada mines, stage roads, bullion deposits, western banks and the industrial machinery of a nineteenth-century branch mint.
The CC Mintmark Returns as a Privy Mark
The Carson City Mint stopped making coins in 1893, but the CC symbol never disappeared from numismatic culture.
In 2021, the United States Mint revived the imagery during the centennial Morgan dollar program.
Because the Carson City facility no longer operated, the modern coin did not carry a true Carson City mintmark.
Instead, the Philadelphia Mint produced a Morgan dollar with a CC privy mark honoring the historic branch mint.
The tribute demonstrates the extraordinary longevity of the symbol first placed on coins in 1870.
The first 3,747 Carson City dollars were more than a day's production.
They represented the culmination of a decade of western mining, congressional action, construction delays and regional demands for a local mint.
They transformed Nevada bullion into federal coinage.
They introduced a mintmark that would become one of the most beloved in American numismatics.
And they launched a mint whose reputation grew far beyond its relatively small output.
Collectors often talk about mintmarks as if they are permanent features of the numismatic landscape.
But every mintmark had a first day.
For CC, that day was February 10, 1870.
Before the press began operating, no United States coin had ever carried those letters.
Afterward, they became inseparable from the history of western coinage.
On February 10, 1870, Carson City's Coin Press No. 1 struck 3,747 Seated Liberty silver dollars—the first United States coins bearing the legendary “CC” mintmark. The first delivery followed the next day, but the birth of Carson City coinage happened on February 10.
Own a Piece of the History
Interested in this classic American coin? Shop handcrafted Morgan Silver Dollar coin rings from CoinCrafters, made from authentic coinage and finished by hand.
ALSO ON THIS DAY
1883 — Liberty Head Nickel: Counterfeiting Warning — Secret Service publicly warned that the new No CENTS Liberty Head nickel could be gold-plated and fraudulently passed as a $5 gold piece.