Denarius

Not by allowing all and sundry to invent arbitrary changes/inventions in a number of scattered and unrelated sources. Ideally, there should be a central recognised "official" source of this sort of information. Penny collectors are lucky in that they have Michael Gouby who is still prepared to acknowledge and document additional varieties but, when he retires, there will be an enormous gap.

Rarity is a somewhat flexible attribute as further examples of rare coins are found. It would be better to quote rarity as an opinion rather than fact. Freeman numbers, however, refer back to a respected and universal source of documented information and are clearly not open to change or invention.

https://thestrand.com/auctions/calendar/list#/auctions/5cec2514-7637-4f39-b576-3be0db39d6ad?department=BDW&lot_status=all&auction_uuid=5cec2514-7637-4f39-b576-3be0db39d6ad

LCA sold similar sets in Sept 2015 and Mar 2014 but no picture of the boxes.

Is there a definition of the 1953 V.I.P. proof set, in terms of the absolute contents, die pairings, etc ? Was it supplied in a special box labelled V.I.P. ? What was the mintage ? Or is it the stuff of myth and legend ?