wildwinds rarity R4.......

Discussion in 'World Coins' started by YOC, Dec 25, 2013.

  1. YOC

    YOC Well-Known Member

    No photo at present, but have just been cleaning some coins and found one of these..........
    Constantine I, Arles, AE 3/4
    CONSTANTI-NVS MAX AVG, rosette-diademed, draped, cuirassed bust right.
    GLORI-IA EXERC-ITVS, Two soldiers standing, both holding a standard, Chi-rho between standards.
    Mintmark PCONST.
    Ref: RIC VII 381, rated R4.
    Now I am never sure about rarity ratings......but I have seen very few (none) of these for sale for ages.....I wonder what R4 actually means?? out of 1000 GE coins, 1 may be a RIC 381...not sure how they do it...anyone have any ideas?
    Photo to follow...
     
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  3. chrsmat71

    chrsmat71 I LIKE TURTLES!

    I'm not entirely clear on this either. :confused:
     
  4. dougsmit

    dougsmit Member

    Each volume of RIC uses different standards for assigning R values. For RIC VII, see page xix. All refer to the number of museums on their list that report having the coin. R5 here means that only one museum had one. R4 means that 2 or 3 did. C3 means that over 40 did. They made no effort to track specimens in private collections. I have seen people show five examples of an R5 coin just to make the point that they are not 'unique'. These rarity ratings may be accurate and may be very misleading. If I found a hoard containing fifty identical mint state coins of a type previously unknown and gave them to a museum, they could share them with 49 of their friends making that coin completely unavailable in the commercial market but C3 in RIC VII terms. If I found a mint sack of 5000 identical coins of something previously R5, the coin would still be R5 unless there were a new edition of RIC AND several museums bought a coin. This is not as likely to happen in the UK where the government would make sure some of the new find got into the museums but it is a real possibility elsewhere.
     
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  5. John Anthony

    John Anthony Ultracrepidarian

    The rarity ratings in RIC refer only to the hoards and collections sampled by the authors of RIC. They are NOT - and this is very important - they are NOT an indicator of a particular coin's general rarity in the marketplace. At any given time, a hoard can be discovered that adds numerous brothers to a coin listed in RIC. At the same time, coins listed as common in RIC can often be quite difficult to find.

    The rarity ratings in RIC have been considerably abused by dealers and collectors alike. They are nothing but an indication of the frequency that coins have been discovered in the hoards and collections sampled by the authors of RIC.
     
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  6. YOC

    YOC Well-Known Member

    Superbly explained by both of you....thank you very much.
    I have certainly not seen one before (in person) and I doubt I could lay my hands on another nice sample easily. I'll get some pictures up soon.
     
  7. dougsmit

    dougsmit Member

    While we are waiting for the pictures, I'll post an example of RIC 375 which is the issue immediately preceeding the one YOC found. It is rated R3 in officina P (mine) and R5 in S. The difference is that mine shows a wreath with a central dot where the YOC discovery will have a chi-rho. There is also a, slightly earlier, wreath without the dot that is RIC 370 and rated R2 in either officina. My coin was $15 in 2001 and bought not for the R3 rating but for the pretty patina.
    rx4710b02352lg.JPG

    I have no idea what grade the coin to be shown will be but its value will be 1% the R4 and 99% some mixture of its appearance/grade and the fact that Christian collectors seem to like these early chi-rho coins. It may seem silly but the bolder the chi-rho, the better. A coin with great surfaces but with weak chi-rho will appeal to fewer people than one with a clear symbol. I don't have a two standards chi-rho to show but shortly after these coins were issued the move to one standards was made and the chi-rho was moved onto the flag on the one standard. My example is a Delmatius (RIC 398 - R3 - $5 in 2006) with poor surfaces and a very bold chi-rho. I'm not sure if I bought it partially because it was a cheap Delmatius or just for the bold chi-rho but I guarantee that being an R3 had nothing to do with it.
    rx5770bb2463.jpg
     
  8. medoraman

    medoraman Supporter! Supporter

    I agree with the others. What I had always heard was copper in RIC was dramatically overestimated for rarity since most of the coins sampled for the series were from museum collections. Most museums simply did not want tens of thousands of seemingly identical copper coins, so many of these coins were not present. However, estimating total population rarity only using museum holdings was a significant pitfall that the authors unfortunately fell into. Also, remember most of these books were written before the iron curtain fell. Coins from places like Siscia used to be much rarer on the market than today.
     
  9. YOC

    YOC Well-Known Member

    I apologise to the coin for the very poor lighting and photography, it is in fact far more beautiful than these images suggest..... arles 006.JPG arles 007.JPG
    arles 005.JPG arles 004.JPG
    My New years resolution is to make a photography set up like dougs....
     
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  10. medoraman

    medoraman Supporter! Supporter

    I love the Chi Ro in between the standards. To me, that makes this a most unusual and interesting coin.
     
  11. YOC

    YOC Well-Known Member

    I think that Arles mint produced some of the most beautiful bronzes of this period....they are identifiable without the mintmarks in most cases.
    here are a couple more 'rarer' ones from my collection.
    arles2 029.JPG arles2 030.JPG arles2 020.JPG arles2 021.JPG
    Siscia and Arles both produced quite a lot of URBS Roma coins where the wolf has a batlike face with big ears and short snout. The die cutters also gave the wolf quite long and thin hind legs. Other mints, notably Trier produced images of 'wolves' which are quite childlike and seem to lack 'life' if that makes sense.??
    The pine tree Gloria exercitus is one of my favourite types too.
     
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