Doesn't eBay take the rare out of rare coins?

I have a few coins that I once considered rare, but if you search on eBay you find pages of your coin for sale. I suppose the word rare is used a little too much. I have a 1928 peace dollar in BU condition, but so do a lot of sellers on eBay. If 100 sellers have one on eBay, how many are out there in personal collections? I'd say bunches, so it isn't rare or hard to find. They're on EBay everyday of the year. Of course a really rare coin like certain mint marks for an 1893 or 1895 Morgan aren't as plentiful, but you can find them on eBay. If you have a coin you think is rare or were told is rare, look on eBay, it will be rare if you don't find its scarcity wanes. They should just say low mintage or maybe I need to take closer look at Webster's definition of rare?
It will likely read like this -Rare: Very scarce and hard to find, except on eBay.
What's your definition of a rare coin?

 

Log in or Sign up to hide this ad.

rare to me is something not readily availible.

 

Rare:seldom occurring or found

Rare is rare becUae there are only so many of that item available. Thus just because you find it on eBay doesn't denote the fact that there are still a finite amount available. Unless of course, in ebays case, they are being counterfeited. Rare will always be rare.

 

The internet has made it sooo... much easier to locate rare low mintage coins. Back in the olden days all you had was small local coin shops and the bigger mail order dealers that advertised in Coin World.

 

You may be right about the counterfeit thing. I've bought 2 or 3 silver dollars on eBay and they were all real. But I quit because I heard fakes were an issue on eBay. I wonder how many of those plentiful rare coins are real?

 

Very true, none of the coin dealers have my coin for sale, eBay is worldwide, not the downtown coin dealer.

 

It's kind of like a steak my friend. There's Rare, Medium Rare, Medium, Medium Well, and Well Done.

But it's also like Kobi steak....the more people want it, the more rare and thus expensive it becomes.

 

So on the steak scale it's like this-
MS60 - 70 rare
AU50 -59 medium rare
F30 - XF 49 medium
F12- 29 medium well
G3 -G4- well done

 

The reason why there appears to be a countless number of rare dates on the 'bay is that the majority of them are not authentic. They may be advertised as authentic, when they're really not. Now I'm not saying that all of them are, you can still get lucky. But another factor is that key dates such as the 1916-D Mercury Dime or 1909-S VDB Cent are not that rare, you can find an abundance of them at coin shows and online like e bay. It is the supply and demand that brings the high prices.

 

You can thank eBay, let alone the internet for exposing once rare pieces out to the worldwide marketplace. It's still a low mintage piece, but they're readily available because of the web.

 

Ebay just makes it easier to shop for them. It didn't change how many exist. But I agree that we may over use the word "rare".

 

Rare is still rare. Some rare coins don't even appear on ebay, trust me I've being searching for them. But ebay does help you locate the hard to find ones, you just have to be careful that they're not counterfeit.

 

I believe this post was better said than mine. +1

 

This is truly a rare coin. I don't think you'll see one of these on ebay although I know what you're saying. Get a coin that has a mintage of less than 10,000, now that's rare. Sure it's foreign but I think you would be very hard pressed to find a US coin with less than 10,000.

 

Less than 10,000? EASY! 1910 and 1913 Matte Proof Lincolns with less than a few thousand minted each. Pretty scarce to find anywhere. You can go to a coin show and find several 09-s VDB's and only one MPL.








I know I take the crappiest of photos...I hope those are good enough to identify. MPL's are great coins.

 

A coin that is R-5 or higher. R-5 means there are 31 to 75 pieces known, and it is where the word Rare first appears on the Sheldon rarity scale. Believe me eBay has not take the "rare" out of those rare coins.

 

Yes this is the Sheldon definition. Problem is almost every series has their own "rarity scale".

A bigger point is almost no US coins are rare. There may be "conditional rarity", or "variety rarity", but if you are talking about a date/mm in all grades, almost no US coins are "rare". Look at the poster child of this, the S VDB cent. Every single coin show for the past 100 years has a dealer with at least one for sale, but this is "the big rarity" of lincoln cents.

A friend of mine literally searched the world for a Persian sigloi for 20 years once, finally finding one for sale after 20 years. There may be 30 of those coins in existence. That is a "rare" coin.

Now, saying all of this, rare does not mean valuable at all, or vice versa. There ARE true rarities on Ebay all of the time, low mintage world coins, ancients that may only exist from that mint in the few dozens, etc. They sell for very little though since almost no one cares. Rarity and age never equal worth, though many believe they do. Its DEMAND that makes your 1928 Peace dollar valuable. Tens of thousands of people every day want to buy that coin, maybe 3 people would ever want to collect the little ugly bronzes I buy, even though mine technically ARE "rare".

Ok, end of rant. Sorry.

Chris

 

Thats what I would consider rare. No US coin minted for circulation meets those criteria, but a lot of tokens do. I have dozens that are R-5 and R-6 and have never seen others of the same.
Guy