1871-CC $5 Liberty Head Half Eagle NGC AU50 (CAC)

With a mintage of 20,770, the 1871-CC $5 Liberty head is scarce to rare in all grades. Gold specialist Doug Winter estimates that 140-150 pieces exist today in all grades, with most of them appearing in lower circulated grades. This piece offered by AUCM is a clean, attractive example in a higher grade for this issue. NGC has graded only 5 as AU50 with 26 finer. In CAC, there are just 2 in AU50 with only 10 finer (the finest is AU58 in CAC).

Nevada State Prison in Carson City during the 1870s. The year this coin was struck, the largest prison break in American history took place in Carson City.

America's largest, most dramatic prison break took place in Carson City the year this coin was struck.

Originally called by its native Mono name, Witsanap, Convict Lake is located in Mono County, California, in the Sherwin Range of the Sierra Nevada mountains. It is known for its beautiful turquoise-blue water, dramatic mountains that surround it, trout fishing, and its quite unusual history. It was renamed from its traditional Mono name by American settlers after an infamous incident that took place on September 23, 1871. On that day 29 convicts escaped from the Nevada State Prison in Carson City and hid out near the lake. After being pursued by a posse that caught up with the convicts, a shootout occurred, during which both posse members and convicts were killed or wounded. The remaining criminals who survived at first escaped but were eventually captured to be returned to the prison in Carson City, but they were lynched instead.