1872 CC Half Dollar 1 1

[Nouzillet]

The entire mintage of 1872 CC half dollars were struck with 9 die marriages that included five different reverse dies.

All of the reverse dies came from previous years. Since the Philadelphia Mint did send  new obverse and reverse dies for the 1872 CC half dollars. Why weren’t any of these  reverse dies used? 

I think the answer was because there was reportedly a railroad blockade that delayed the arrival of these dies from Philadelphia. This resulted in pent up demand for the coins. 

In turn the Superintendent of the CC Mint made a request and received 1872 obverse half dollar dies from the SFBM Superintendent . On February 13th, the coins were reportedly struck with the new obverse dies. Source: Gold Hill (Nevada) Evening News February 14th, 1872

In a letter dated November 10th, 1871, P Mint Director Pollock , stated that he had sent the SFBM a number of dies for the year 1872 including 10 obverse and 10 reverse half dollar dies.

 The SF Archives at San Bruno do not have the response correspondence from the SFBM until September of 1872 forward. So I don’t know when they received their 1872 coining dies.

I looked for and did not find a request from CC to SF in 1872 for the needed obverse dies. The surviving records are simply not complete.

I can say that the two Mints borrowed dies from each other on a number of occasions so this was nothing extraordinary .

Perhaps once the CC Mint started coining their 1872  half dollars  ,they did not require any of the half dollar reverse dies that must have eventually arrived from Philadelphia later in the year.

 

 

[RWB]

This might help a little. It accounts for about 16% of the year's production of halves.

Edited May 24, 2020 by RWB

[Conder101]

Also it would not be unusual to try and use up previously used rev dies that were still serviceable first.