1876-CC Twenty-Cent Piece

The 1876-CC twenty-cent piece is one of the most celebrated rarities in all of American numismatics. Although a modest quantity was originally struck, the overwhelming majority was melted by the Mint rather than released, leaving only a very small number of examples known to survive today.

Its combination of extreme rarity, Carson City mint origin, and dramatic backstory of near-total destruction has made it a legendary coin that collectors of both twenty-cent pieces and Carson City coinage regard as a pinnacle rarity, often out of reach for all but the most well-resourced collections.

The twenty-cent piece had already begun to fail commercially by 1876 due to confusion with the quarter dollar, and demand for the denomination collapsed sharply. The Carson City Mint struck a modest quantity of twenty-cent pieces that year, but because so few were needed or wanted, the vast majority of the mintage was ultimately returned to the Mint and melted down rather than being released into circulation.

Only a small number of coins are believed to have escaped the melting, likely preserved by mint employees, officials, or collectors at the time, or held back before the bulk of the mintage was destroyed. This near-total destruction is what elevated the 1876-CC from a merely low-mintage issue to one of the great condition and survivorship rarities of the entire US coinage series.

The coin shares the same design as all twenty-cent pieces: Liberty seated on a rock holding a shield and a liberty-cap pole on the obverse, and an eagle with arrows and an olive branch on the reverse, with TWENTY CENTS beneath the eagle. The 'CC' mintmark appears on the reverse below the eagle.

Given the coin's extraordinary rarity and value, any example purporting to be a genuine 1876-CC must be verified by a top-tier grading service with expertise in this series; the smooth, plain edge (as opposed to the reeded edge of a quarter) remains a basic identifying feature shared with all twenty-cent pieces, but authentication of the date and mintmark combination is essential given the coin's significance.

As one of the key rarities of American coinage, the 1876-CC twenty-cent piece brings prices that regularly reach into the hundreds of thousands of dollars, even in relatively modest circulated grades, reflecting the extremely small number of known surviving examples. Prices realized at public auction for this date have consistently ranked among the highest for any 19th-century United States coin of its type.

Due to its fame, value, and the very small population of genuine examples, any coin offered as an 1876-CC twenty-cent piece warrants extreme caution and should only be acquired with certification from a leading grading service and, ideally, documented auction provenance.