“This die struck this coin”
This story ties together the previous two. As was written earlier, the fantastic discovery of the dies next to the Carson City Mint yielded four twenty-cent dies. Two of them were so badly corroded
that nothing of the design survived. The other two dies had some design details remaining, despite more than a century of rust and corrosion. It had long ago been determined by everyone that studied
them that neither of those two dies had matched any known twenty-cent pieces struck in Carson City. Lane was in on the discovery of the twenty-cent piece dies in 2002, and John was able to make a
trip to the Nevada State Museum in July 2013. Bob Nylen, Gene Hattori, and Ken Hopple were once again very gracious and afforded an opportunity for close inspection and photography of the dies.
As mentioned earlier, the obverse die, dated 1876, was certainly not the doubled die that struck the legendary 1876-CC coins, as its date position was not the same as the well-known rarity. This was
an unused die that was cancelled before being discarded. The reverse die, despite being badly deteriorated during its time in the ground, clearly had a mintmark position that did not match any of the
1875-CC or 1876-CC coins. Therefore, it was always assumed it must have also been an unused die that was later cancelled and buried in the pit.
After the events of August at the 2013 ANA Convention when two new die marriages were cataloged, the authors decided to take another look at the dies. After all, the close, in-person inspection and
photography of the dies was still fresh in our memory, as it had only taken place the previous month, in July. But after August, there was a new reverse to consider.
When examining the reverse die more closely, the photograph clearly shows a prominent die crack in the die itself, which is seen directly next to the Y in TWENTY. Sound familiar? In addition, a
close look at the mintmark position on the die shows it shows that is lower than the two previously known dies, but a match to the newly discovered reverse die.
The realization was stunning – the newly discovered 1875-CC reverse, first cataloged in the summer of 2013, was an exact match to the die dug up and restored in Carson City. The evidence is undeniable.
The enlarged photos below of the die and the 1875-CC BF-1 reverse clearly show the match between the die and the coin, remembering the die is the reverse image of the resulting coin (left-to-right).
  Low sloping CC on recovered reverse die |
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 Low and sloping CC on 1875-CC BF-1 |
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This discovery made the memorable visit to Carson City in the summer of 2013 even more special!
