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davidrj

Defining Rarity

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Interesting article on a standardised rarity scale here

Though its extension to "16,000,000 known" seems way OTT even for collectors of US coins

David

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I can see the rationale for a logical numerical progression of absolute numbers, but a scale such as this merely tells you how many are out there, not the numbers typically available which defines rarity for the collector. 1000 collectors and 500 pieces known is extremely rare in terms of availability because most will be held in collections and so unavailable to others. 500 collectors of a piece where 1000 are available will always be for sale in a tray somewhere. There was a book written by Cope and Rayner in 1972 called English Milled Coinage where an estimate of the rarity for milled coins in a given grade was made. This is far more useful than a number representing the pieces available which can not anticipate supply vs. demand and hence to a certain extent, price.

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The same with Freeman's bronze coinage rarity scale, for a lot of the Victorian era he has given a scale of rarity not only taken into account the mintage numbers but also the fact that a huge number of them are worn down to barely readable discs.

With that said, this one looks an awful lot like Freemans..

Good read though, not to detract from your post! :)

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I think availability/demand is perhaps a more useful measure.

Calling a coin rare to me suggests that if I want one I will find it a challenge. But if there are ten examples but only four collectors ...

And of course, many of us here probably own quite rare coins that will never command the prices paid for some for which thousands of examples still exist.

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I can see the rationale for a logical numerical progression of absolute numbers, but a scale such as this merely tells you how many are out there, not the numbers typically available which defines rarity for the collector. 1000 collectors and 500 pieces known is extremely rare in terms of availability because most will be held in collections and so unavailable to others. 500 collectors of a piece where 1000 are available will always be for sale in a tray somewhere. There was a book written by Cope and Rayner in 1972 called English Milled Coinage where an estimate of the rarity for milled coins in a given grade was made. This is far more useful than a number representing the pieces available which can not anticipate supply vs. demand and hence to a certain extent, price.

That's a very good book, though you have to watch out for a few glaring errors - the 1923 halfcrown being rated rarer than the 1925 is a case in point!

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There's always going to be a few anomalies, but the basic principle is sound.

Tongue in cheek, maybe Seaby had a load of 1923 halfcrowns to shift. ;)

Edited by Rob

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Mine's says it was a 1975 edition - are there two books? Mine also has Mr Cope's signature, but sadly not Rayner's, so it's impaired. :(

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Mine's says it was a 1975 edition - are there two books? Mine also has Mr Cope's signature, but sadly not Rayner's, so it's impaired. :(

Oops. Sorry, misprunt. My brain was following the title which says 1662-1972.

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My E.M.C. says .. First Edition 1975 with foreword dated Summer 1974, so seems

1975 was when it appeared. Mine has a loose December 1978 Price List . I had not

seen a copy until about 6 months ago and it was being retailed at £6.00 , a bargain !!

and a great reference book to have.

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Just talking about this with a collector this morning. We use terms such as scare, rare etc freely thinking that others will understand what we mean. Of course their scarce, rare is likely something different to them.

Must say I would be miffed if I bought what I was told was a "rare" coin and found four or five in auction during the year and one or two in dealers stock lists.

Have noticed the term " excessively rare" used. Anyone like to have a go at what that means? Genuinely interested in feedback on this.

Also Tom's point is very good one to make. Why do some things considered rare seem to have more attraction than other rare items. Is it the smart thing to buy up all of the less fashionable rarities in the hope that "every dog has its day".

Regards

Mark

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Just talking about this with a collector this morning. We use terms such as scare, rare etc freely thinking that others will understand what we mean. Of course their scarce, rare is likely something different to them.

Must say I would be miffed if I bought what I was told was a "rare" coin and found four or five in auction during the year and one or two in dealers stock lists.

Have noticed the term " excessively rare" used. Anyone like to have a go at what that means? Genuinely interested in feedback on this.

Also Tom's point is very good one to make. Why do some things considered rare seem to have more attraction than other rare items. Is it the smart thing to buy up all of the less fashionable rarities in the hope that "every dog has its day".

Regards

Mark

I would suggest a case where there is one available to collectors or possibly 2 only.

There is an example of this in the BM but I don't know what it's like. Oxford 1644 groat (Morrieson F-2) with the Rawlins signed bust and first issue style line declaration reverse as opposed to the later cartouche. Not in Brooker, not in Morrieson who referred only to the BM's piece in his 1922 BNJ article, not in the most comprehensive Charles I collection I know (and that has more varieties than Brooker's silver) and not in Montagu either who would certainly not have passed up the chance to get one. Worth noting that despite being double struck and only around the VF mark, it was illustrated in Hamilton-Smith's 1919 sale which would not be normal for a commoner piece, or even some rarities.

C1873-16444dRawlinsobvMorrF-2.jpg

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Have noticed the term " excessively rare" used. Anyone like to have a go at what that means? Genuinely interested in feedback on this.

Also Tom's point is very good one to make. Why do some things considered rare seem to have more attraction than other rare items. Is it the smart thing to buy up all of the less fashionable rarities in the hope that "every dog has its day".

Mmm .. I think it's difficult to pin down because, as you say, people will have different views. I think excessively rare has to be limited to under 5 known. I have a coin Michael Sharp termed as such (because of the privy mark rather than that it's an exciting design!) I have found 3 apart from my own. MS's is in the BM so I guess one less available.

5-10 rare. 10+ scarce. After that, well, patience and a fair wind will get you an example if you want so just "uncommon".

As to buying rarities, probably not. Some things such as certain Morgan dollars or Newark siege coins command higher than might be deserved prices due to sentiment. Other genuinely rare but unexciting coins might suddenly become popular. But my feeling is that if they haven't attracted a collector base by now, they probably won't!

Uniqueness is another strange factor. Unique coins are often undervalued. Then another turns up and it becomes a recognised type or variety and whoosh!

When I bought my Sharp G3/2 (S.2804), which is one of the two 'discovery' coins published in the the BNJ, there were the same number known as S.2790 with the plume over shield reverse. However the list price for S.2804 doesn't and likely never will match the latter as it was known and sought after earlier. And particularly as there are now 10 known examples of S.2804 as more have come to light.

:wacko:

Edited by TomGoodheart
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Rob & Tom,

Thanks for your thoughts. Here are A. Rayner's definitions from ESC.

R7 Only one or two examples known

R6 Three or four examples known.

R5 Five to ten examples known

R4 Eleven to twenty examples known

R3 Extremely rare

R2 Very rare

R. Rare

S. Scarce

I think this is quite a sensible approach. Of course criticisms could made but this is not an exact science.

I wonder whether Tom under five for excessively rare is a little low. Perhaps under twenty bearing in mind they would rarely if ever come to market.

In practice "rare" is used by dealers and auctions for things like 1930 or 1925 2/6's and on balance we understand them. You could say they are talking there own book but I think most get it right.

For me it is the higher rarity factor that is interesting. It certainly needs more definition. Actually the scale used at the beginning and Rayner's that I have quoted try to come to terms with it. Perhaps we should use a scale like this in the same way we use a scale for grading. One could argue it has a similar impact on price although I appreciate that's not everything.

By the way thank you both for the examples you have used, most interesting.

Regards

Mark

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20 pieces is relatively common. I think you need to get away from the 'isn't available today' approach. Most coins where there are only a few known don't get on the radar of the average collector who is usually concentrating on the more mundane varieties. Price is a factor here because many would steer clear of something which is going to cost them multiples of the common type. In these instances it is a case of waiting patiently for what goes around to come around.

Anything with 20 pieces will probably come around once a year to a year and a half on average. With say 4 or 5 pieces they might come around every 6 to 8 years. I would call that extremely rare but not excessively so which I would take to imply virtually unobtainable. Availability in the case of seriously rare pieces is effectively determined by the average time taken to form a collection, as once it is complete the pieces come on the market again if sold. Obviously it can't apply if the collection is set aside for generations or passes to the next generation as an ongoing concern, but most collections are not like this. Most serious collectors don't really go for decent collections including major rarities until they are middle aged with a bit of money in the bank, so a generation is probably the time limit for most people to collect. That is the basic criteria I used in arriving at the above figures.

In the case of the coin above, it was available in the market to buy in 1919, 1956, 1979, 1995 and 2011, so available every 20-25 years on average, or one generation. Then it only depends on the depth of your pockets.

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I wonder whether Tom under five for excessively rare is a little low. Perhaps under twenty bearing in mind they would rarely if ever come to market.

Well .. I think it's worth considering that market and availability aren't necessarily the same thing!

I'm pretty sure that the sort of thing I collect as often passes from one collector to another directly as is obtained through the open market.

But then I suspect that the number of specialist Charles I shilling collectors is quite small. Which means that 20 examples would probably satisfy all who wanted one and still leave spares for less specialised collectors.

Whereas the collector base for some other coins (and I'm thinking of the US market primarily) is much larger and so 20 coins could disappear and an example not re-surface for many years.

Which I guess is me saying that absolute numbers, beyond the near unique such as Rob's groat, are not always the be-all and end-all.

When US collectors talk of 'rare' coins they sometimes refer to numbers that exceed the entire population of something like the Northumberland shilling. How many 'key date' 1911-D $10s are there for example? But I bet most US collectors would think of it as a rare coin.

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Subjective then. But I see both your point of views

Mark

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There are very few coins for normal run of the mill collectors that are virtually unobtainable. Just taking milled pieces and leaving aside the unrecorded varieties which once announced appear from every nook and cranny, none of the circulation crowns would fit that description. Halfcrowns the hardest to get would be 1667/4 (3 known, best is fine) and elephant below. Even the 1823 first issue is commoner than these two. Shillings, nothing springs to mind apart from possibly the odd transposed shields variety. 1850s come up every year or two. etc etc. We have the question of some of the small denomination dates, but here we are not even certain they exist.

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"Just taking milled pieces and leaving aside the unrecorded varieties which once announced appear from every nook and cranny, none of the circulation crowns would fit that description."

So if rarities are your thing, I suspect we all like the idea of something special, the true rarity hunter probably needs to go back further.

I suspect rarity can be an elastic term.

Mark

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"Just taking milled pieces and leaving aside the unrecorded varieties which once announced appear from every nook and cranny, none of the circulation crowns would fit that description."

So if rarities are your thing, I suspect we all like the idea of something special, the true rarity hunter probably needs to go back further.

I suspect rarity can be an elastic term.

Mark

If people want rarities they need to specialise and dig deep. Things might be difficult to buy because there isn't enough to satisfy demand, but that's not the same as saying they are rare. What it probably means in all bar a few cases is that they aren't prepared to spend more money than the opposition.

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I think you and I are singing from different hymnsheets Rob. To you, it's not rare unless only a handful is known. To me, in the context of artifacts produced by the multi-million, a few thousand is rare, a few hundred very rare, and anything under a hundred is extremely rare. Which is where this whole subjective debate began...

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I think you and I are singing from different hymnsheets Rob. To you, it's not rare unless only a handful is known. To me, in the context of artifacts produced by the multi-million, a few thousand is rare, a few hundred very rare, and anything under a hundred is extremely rare. Which is where this whole subjective debate began...

Peck,

As per my earlier posts I'm inclined to agree with that.

The post that started this thread and A. Rayner tried to quantify what a rarity is and to what degree.

Of course we haven't muddied the waters with "rare in this high grade" that's a whole new subject.

Regards

Mark

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I think you and I are singing from different hymnsheets Rob. To you, it's not rare unless only a handful is known. To me, in the context of artifacts produced by the multi-million, a few thousand is rare, a few hundred very rare, and anything under a hundred is extremely rare. Which is where this whole subjective debate began...

Much of the nit picking has concerned the terminology 'excessively rare'. Whichever system you use be it Rayner, Freeman, Peck, or whoever's, excessively rare is the one below unique. The reason I used excessively rare for the groat was the existence of a second example in the BM. The fact that only one is available to collectors does not make it unique.

I prefer the approach of Cope and Rayner with variable grade/rarities shown. If you want to assemble a date run with anything that is available in any grade regardless, with the exception of a handful of difficult dates, I think you would complete most gaps within a few days by trawling the internet. The net has made a lot of coins more common than they used to be as you have a greater number of dealers at your disposal.

A further consideration with regular currency pieces is the reluctance by many to overspend on a coin because of the published prices in the guides. This enhances the rumours of rarity, whereas in essence it is really reflecting the willingness to pay. If you posted a message on a board saying you would pay £50 for a £10 coin, you would soon get a reply. A fairer expansion of the rare definition would be the difficulties encountered in finding a coin in an exact grade or the slab with the highest number, with a maximum number of marks, with a certain colour tone, at a certain price relative to the books and all with eye appeal. The last sentence is probably a reasonable summary of the main impediments to obtaining a coin.

As always, it is each to their own interpretation.

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Personally rarity is to do primarily with mintage (subtracting those melted down) and then condition. Not availability in the market. If 2000 collectors held this exact same coin and never released them to market from family generation to generation, the coin in my opinion is still not rare.

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Personally rarity is to do primarily with mintage (subtracting those melted down) and then condition. Not availability in the market. If 2000 collectors held this exact same coin and never released them to market from family generation to generation, the coin in my opinion is still not rare.

Yes - I understand this point. I think Rob is conflating 'rarity' and 'availability', which is of course a perfectly justified and meaningful position. But then there is 'absolute rarity' which - as you say - includes all specimens held by collectors whether or not they appear on the market from time to time.

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If I was Dr Evil, I would test this theory by buying every known example of a well known rare coin and then in front of the world destroy all but one of them and then watch the market price of that unique coin. ...

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