1891-CC Morgan Dollar

The 1891-CC, at 1,618,000 pieces, continued the Carson City Morgan Dollar production restart that had begun with the 1890-CC after the 1885-1888 closure-era hiatus. The Sherman Silver Purchase Act of July 1890 had expanded Treasury silver allocations, and Carson City received a meaningful share of the increased production. The 1891-CC carries the standard Reverse of 1879 hub configuration; the year's specialist collecting interest centers on the Spitting Eagle VAM variety catalogued in VAM literature, where a die chip near the eagle's beak produces the appearance of liquid issuing from the eagle's mouth.

Strike quality on the 1891-CC is consistently sharp, with Liberty's hair detail and the eagle's central feathers coming up cleanly on most coins from early die states. The General Services Administration sales of 1972 through 1980 distributed a substantial share of the 1891-CC mintage to collectors in tamper-evident plastic holders. PCGS, the Professional Coin Grading Service, and NGC populations cluster at MS63 and MS64, with MS65 examples available and MS66 condition-scarce. GSA-pedigreed examples command small premiums for the original packaging across the modern collector market for Carson City Morgans.

The 1891-CC is a Semi-Key issue and an accessible Carson City Morgan Dollar pickup at the mid-grade level. Pricing has held flat for two decades at moderate premiums above the GSA-flooded common-date CC level. The 1891-CC pairs with the 1890-CC and 1892-CC as the early-1890s Carson City Semi-Key trio that closed out the Western mint's Morgan Dollar production before the 1893-CC final year. The GSA distribution of 1972-1980 released approximately 3 million government-held Carson City Morgan Dollars from Treasury vault inventory and permanently anchored the modern survival rates and pricing structure for the entire 1878-1893 Carson City Morgan subset. PCGS and NGC certified-pop distributions for CC-mint dates reflect both the GSA distribution and pre-1972 collector preservation patterns. For the Carson City production context and the broader GSA distribution history that shaped modern CC pricing, see the Morgan Dollar series history.