VBA: find second largest value - vba

Question

I have the following problem: I try to filter a date column (A) in a worksheet (HISTORICALS) to return the highest and second highest date value. Currently, there is dates ranging from the 25th to the 31st of December in this column. Unfortunately, below formula (using the Large function) returns the 31st two times (and not the 30th and 31st as intended).
Sub Select_Last_Two_Days()
With Worksheets("HISTORICALS")
Highest_Max = Format(WorksheetFunction.Large(Worksheets("HISTORICALS").Range("A:A"), 1), "Short Date")
Second_Highest_Max = Format(WorksheetFunction.Large(Worksheets("HISTORICALS").Range("A:A"), 2), "Short Date")
Debug.Print Highest_Max, Second_Highest_Max
End With
End Sub
The column has approx. 2000 rows, with dates occuring multiple times. So ideally I would want to filter for distinct values and then return the two highest dates. Any idea how I can do that?

Answer 1

Simply translate Barry Houdinis answer from How to find the first and second maximum number? to VBA:
Sub Select_Last_Two_Days()
With Worksheets("HISTORICALS")
Highest_Max = Format(WorksheetFunction.Max(.Range("A:A")), "Short Date")
Second_Highest_Max = Format(WorksheetFunction.Large(.Range("A:A"), WorksheetFunction.CountIf(.Range("A:A"), WorksheetFunction.Max(.Range("A:A"))) + 1), "Short Date")
Debug.Print Highest_Max, Second_Highest_Max
End With
End Sub

Answer 2

The recommendations given in the comments are probably the simplest and least amount of code way to do things but here is another sugggestion:
Sub test()
Dim wb As Workbook
Dim ws As Worksheet
Set wb = ThisWorkbook
Set ws = wb.Worksheets("HISTORICALS")
Dim lastRow As Long
lastRow = ws.Cells(ws.Rows.Count, "A").End(xlUp).Row
Dim loopArr()
loopArr = ws.Range("A1:A" & lastRow).Value
Dim maxVal As Date
maxVal = Application.WorksheetFunction.Large(ws.Range("A1:A" & lastRow), 1)
Dim i As Long
Dim secondVal As Date
For i = UBound(loopArr, 1) To LBound(loopArr, 1) Step -1
If loopArr(i, 1) < maxVal Then
secondVal = loopArr(i, 1)
Exit For
End If
Next i
End Sub