How few in existence to be considered rare

My coin finally showed up and wanted to see how many I could find. I wasn't concerned with the type, denomination, or legend break ect, but with how many exist for this particular ruler. I searched museums, dealer stock, and online archives (I don't use paid subscriptions) and found 78 examples for this particular ruler. Of course there is no way of knowing how many are in private hands or if a person is hoarding them, but at least we know X number have to exist. I've read some consider Eid Mar Denarii to not be rare because 100 or more are known to exist, but that is just one type. Would the same be said if only 100 coins of Julius Caesar were ever known to exist? So my question is what does everyone consider an amount of coins known to exist for a ruler for it to be rare?

Here is the coin that prompted the question.

Timarchus, usurper
Ecbatana
164 to 161 BC
Obvs: Diademed head of Timarchus right, dotted border.
Revs: BAΣΙΛΕΩΣ MEΓAΛOY TIMAPXΟΥ, Nike advancing left holding palm frond and crowning royal name.
AE 33x34mm, 28.58g
Ref: SC 1598; HGC 10, 769(R2)

 

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I have several where very few are known to exist (under 20 known). However, I am always curious as to the volume of coins originally struck.

This is one from Etruria, an ancient Empire prior to Rome, and whom probably founded Rome. However, at the time that Etruria minted these coins, they were on the decline. They were minted soon to be absorbed into the emerging Empire of the Roman Republic.

I like having good provenances so that you have a reasonable assurance that it is, in fact, the real deal.

Etruria



Etruria, Populonia
2 ½ asses (similar to a Roman Sestertius)
3rd century BCE
AR 0.85 g.
Radiate female head r.; behind, CII.
Rev. Blank. EC 104 (misdescribed, Female head with an Attic helmet). Historia Numorum Italy 179.
Of the highest rarity, apparently only the second specimen known.
Dark patina and about very fine
From the collection of E.E. Clain-Stefanelli

 

When considering whether or not a coin is rare there are many factors.
For instance, how many are actually available to collectors. It is nice to
know how many are in museums, but if they are not available for purchase
by collectors then their population is not that significant to the collector.
Nice to know, not really relevant. Condition is important. Most Ides of March
coins are severely struck off center. A truly nice piece that is well struck
will bring BIG money. In my collection I have several pieces that make
the Ides of March coins seem very common by comparison. There is very little
demand for the coins I collect. Thank God!! So what is available to the
collector, condition and demand play in whether a coin can be called "RARE".
I would call the Ides of March coin rare to very rare because there is quite a bit of
demand for the coin, especially in well centered condition.

 

This question is one with no good answer. Rarity means nothing without demand or interest in the coin. There may be 100 EID MAR denarii but there are over a thousand people (10,000?) who would like one so it is 'rare' in that sense. On the other hand, there are coins that exist in only one or a few examples but no one cares so the type is lumped with other items of the same ruler unless they end up in a collection owned by one person who cares (usually after deciding the coin is rare). It makes no difference whatsoever how many were made but how many survived and still exist.

Many of us have at least one coin that we have never seen offered or listed in public collections. My experience in this has been that coins I thought to be unique become less so as our experience increases. Lately we have been blessed with more online resources than previously including some great collections like the British Museum. (Hint: They have added many coins since their books were published.) A coin I once thought to be one of three became one of five when the BM posted the two that they own. Here on Coin Talk, many of my 'rare' treasures were downgraded when I found that Martin owned one. There is no way of knowing how may people there are out there who own coins I would like to see but remain silent for a lifetime. If collections are passed down in the family and not sent off to market, it is quite possible for a rarity to remain unknown for a century.

I have during the past thirty years of Internet access posted several requests that people report to me if they know of another example of some coins I find of interest but never hear a report or get an offer to sell me one. That does not mean the item does not exist. That does not mean some museum does not have a bucket full of them. That does not mean the current owner of a coin even knows it is different from a thousand other coins.

I would love to hear how people expect to discover how many of something exists under the current circumstances. I suspect 95% of all collectors do so in private and 95% of public holdings remain less than fully cataloged let alone published in a manner that someone could discover their contents. We have old publications that include coins that probably ceased to exist due to war, theft/melting or 'bronze disease'. We are told stories about coins that were rare but not all of them are known publicly today. Years ago I was told that there was only one aureus of Pescennius Niger but it was destroyed in 'The War'. More recently I have seen at least half a dozen but have no idea if the lost one is included or how many more there are. For that matter, I have no idea if someone reading this owns one and is not saying.

I do suggest being a little careful when tempted to pay a 'unique' price for a coin. I would love to know how we are to know the count.

 

@tibor, Rarity is indeed qualifiable in some of the attributes you mention - availability in private hands and condition are often noted as an qualifiers of rarity. I'm not sure that I agree that demand is one of these factors. A coin that few people want for their collections is still rare if there are only a few available. They may not be worth much, but they are still rare.

 

We might well confuse between rarity and desirability,while demand would depend on any of them beside condition of course.There might also be other factors. What do I know?

 

In a paper by David Hendin and Arthur Houghton, the authors suggest R1 should mean "10-30 examples" for Seleukid bronze, but a different number of examples for Silver and for Jewish coins.

https://www.academia.edu/8814849/Wi...arity_in_Seleucid_and_Ancient_jewish_Coinages

 

Known examples is a valid metric but we should also consider how many known die pairs there are, giving visibility into how many coins might have been made.

For example, a coin of only five known sounds exceedingly rare but if the five were all from different dies, there could be tens of thousands that existed at one point.

 

Die studies and estimates of the size of a coinage through these dies studies is helpful in determining the rarity of surviving specimens (See Warren Esty's [ @Valentinian ] foundational work on this topic: Estimation of the Size of a Coinage: a Survey and Comparison of Methods by WARREN W. ESTY
The Numismatic Chronicle - 1986).

For die studies in my focus area (Early Roman Republican silver) I rely on correspondents who have devoted much of their lives assembling "corpuses" of these series, including Pierluigi Debernardi and Richard Schaefer. Both of whom have spent years researching sales offerings online, researching sale catalogs in libraries, and examining museum collections. Unfortunately, although both are respected authorities and published authors, these vast lifetime die study works are largely unpublished so I depend on our private correspondence to request bits and pieces for my own reference. Judging from the size of some of these studies (for example, more than 1000 coins in just one Crawford variety - RRC 53/2) it's not surprising that this sort of study (with all images and die links described) is not suitable for a typical journal article. A book length publication is a potential, but these are living breathing studies with new examples emerging decades after the study was initiated.

Are there other great ancient coin die study researchers (published or otherwise)?

 

I have several coins in my collection which are known from only a few examples cited in museum collections and online databases. I personally think that less than 10 qualifies as rare, while 11 to about 40 I consider scarce. I also take into account die-matches. The fewer dies, the scarcer the issue is likely to be, as a rule of thumb.

But all of us have rare coins. In ancient numismatics, there is nothing more common than a rare coin!

 

Die studies are great for telling what once may have existed but tell nothing about what still exists. There is no reason to assume that the same percentage of any two issues survives. There are too many factors. Some coins were made in periods just before a reform and most made would have been melted. Coins that were declared illegal to own (Pescennius Niger
?) may show more dies than the specimen count would suggest. Coins that were too good for their time could have been melted in larger numbers than the average. A mint 'sack' intended to a military pay could have thousands of coins from the same die but might have been the only coins ever made of that type. I wonder what the greatest number of surviving coins from one die is (or if anyone has counted such a thing).

I certainly agree as long as we realize that such rules are not always perfect.

 

I said 10 or less.

I don't use catalogs anymore to rate rarity, they usually rate market value, I try to use the archeological data of site finds for my coins. In the digs at Corinth and Athens they noted what they found and how many. I am finding this data to be the best judge.
I am specialized to a denomination that circulated predominantly in Greece for two centuries, I do realize this would be very difficult for other collectors.

 

While I agree with much that has been said I think an important distinction is that I was asking specifically about a total population for a ruler. To me I think it is a different animal than comparing a type. A ruler may have a coin that is unique, but it is completely different for a ruler to be unique. Almost all rulers have a type or denomination that is considered rare either way you classify it. I can see there is quite a lot of different opinions on rarity which I find interesting.

 

I wrote an in-depth article on coin rarity which you might find of interest

https://dirtyoldcoins.com/Roman-Coins-Blog/1267

Basically it comes down to there's no hard and fast rule that is "right" because the term is used in both the absolute and relative senses of the word. Your ordinary Constantine bronze (often sold with misunderstood 'R5' ratings) may number in the hundreds and be considered dirt common and yet a 1909 SVDB penny with a mintage of 400,000 is considered a rarity. Different scales, different markets.

Rasiel

 

Thank you for this link. It answers many questions about how your rarity ratings came to be. A couple things in the red letter addendum at the end seem particularly interesting. Coins sold in lots of more than one coin and sales under $5 were excluded. This would seem to have an inordinate effect on coins of Constantine (mostly AE3) compared to coins of, for example, Trajan who produced higher priced silver and large bronzes. A few years ago, CNG sold several large lots in their sales each with 100 very high grade folles of Constantine. I suppose this has little effect on numbers as high as we see here but these lots were not the first time large groups of late Romans were traded but I doubt anyone has ever sold a bulk lot of a hundred denarii of Otho, Didius Julianus etc. I did not include Pertinax here because I wonder if there was not a sale of the finds that brought all his Alexandria mint denarii to market but these would not have been cataloged auctions that would show in such a survey. This, of course, raises the question of how many coins are sold by 'private treaty' as opposed to cataloged auction. Surveying the wares of European flea markets over that same century is a study that can not happen. Would the results change the numbers?

What it comes down to is that statistics lie like politicians. Our job in both cases is to discern which ones are real as opposed to which ones 'prove' a decision already made by whoever commissioned the study. Still, there remains the fact that it makes no difference how many coins exist but how hard it will be to find one if you want it. Back in the days when relatively few coins were illustrated in sale catalogs, it was easier to find described and photographed coins of any ruler from 193 AD other than Septimius Severus whose coins had to be special in some way to make the sale. That does not mean that Pertinax and Didius are more common than Septimius but just more likely to be listed separately and fully described as to reverse type. Without photos, it was not always easy to know if a coin for sale in several auctions was the same specimen remarketed or different.

I appreciate the hard work Ras put into the rarity ratings but will never be convinced that the results can be accepted without applying factors addressing errors introduced in many ways.

 

The <$5 coins are mostly problematic because they're too worn to be id'd. Even the least interesting of Fel Temps will sell for more than that if identifiable.

In any case, there's definitely no perfect model. The best one can hope is to get a good enough approximation that it becomes a useful tool; as for example in predicting trends, prices and (most importantly) getting a good read on market availability. As you correctly point out, that's really the only metric that counts for most of us.

Rasiel

 

David, you pose an interesting question & will get a variety of answers . Having authored so many books, what is your standard for rarity ? One standard I find useful is by Richard McAlee, in his book The Coins of Roman Antioch. He states: "Extremely Rare" means that 1 or 2 coins are known to the author, "Very Rare" means 3 to 5 coins known, and "Rare" means 6 to 12 coins known. As you state it's hard to know how many coins are not know to an author or expert, & of course the discovery of a new hoard can quickly change the status of a coin.

 

I base rarity off of availability. A major rarity is one in which none are available in private hands. Extremely rare is a coin that shows up on the market once a decade or so. And so on and so forth.

This, however, does not take into account the number extant in museums or still in the ground, both factors have the ability to vastly alter a coin’s “rarity”

 

For ANY series, it all depends on how many people want to collect it.

 

Interesting question that I don't have a straightforward answer for.

Personally, my definition gets a lot more strict as you move up the hierarchy from:

Civilization ‐> Ruler -> Denomination -> Type -> Variety

I consider Otho to be "rare" even though dozens if not hundreds of his coins are offered every year. But when it comes to a line break or officina mark, it had better be one of about 5 known before I will consider paying more for it.