The recent NumisMedia Market Report on the Carson City Mint brought back memories of my very first Carson City coin, an 1878 CC Silver Dollar that I found in circulation during the summer of 1962. http://www.ngccoin.com/news/viewarticle.aspx?NewsletterNewsArticleID=1697

When I was in high school during the early 1960's, I worked in a factory over the summer break. Every week, when I cashed my pay check, I would ask the bank teller for a roll of Silver Dollars. When I got home, I would look for dates or mint marks that I did not have and carefully place them in blue Whitman coin albums. The remainder would be returned to the bank for rolls of lower denomination coins for me to search through.

In those days the Treasury Department still had vaults full of mint sealed bags of silver Morgan and Peace Dollars, and every bank maintained a stock of BU cartwheels that their customers could obtain for face value.

After a couple years of going through bank rolls of Silver Dollars, I had found most of the common date Philadelphia, San Francisco, and New Orleans Morgans but none from the elusive Carson City Mint. Then one hot July day during the summer of 1962 I found my very first Carson City coin. I can still remember how excited I was when I discovered an 1878 CC Silver Dollar buried halfway through a roll of common date Morgans. Looking at the coin today I would say that it would probably grade EF45 or AU50. Although the 1878 CC is not particularly valuable in EF -- AU, this will always be a very special coin to me.

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