Owner Comments:
Of all the Carson City Morgan dollars that were stored for close to a century between the Nevada Mint and the Treasury, the 1883-CC and 1884-CC issues were by far the most plentiful and remain common today in grades up to MS65. Anything nicer than that is a rarity, and is elusive.
Dave Bowers wrote in his Encyclopedia: "The 1884-CC is very common in Mint State. In fact, it is the most common of all Carson City dollars in this regard. Probably a million or more exist. Most are in the range of MS-60 through MS-63, however, many MS64s remain, and MS65 coins are not rare."
Prior to the 1930s, this date was considered a prime rarity, since knowledge of those coins stored in Treasury vaults was generally unavailable to the numismatic community. Of course the relatively low mintage of just over 1 million coins tended to corroborate the perceived rarity. Bowers further explained that "962,638 [pieces], amounting to 84.7% of the original mintage, were still in the hands of the Treasury Department after March 1964, when a halt was called to the great Treasury release that began in October 1962."