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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;dougsmit, post: 3377964, member: 19463&quot;]This is a very good point that new collectors might learn.&nbsp; The word &#039;rare&#039; is much abused.&nbsp; If there are a hundred examples and a thousand people want them, a coin might be termed rare but what do we call a coin known by two or three examples?&nbsp; Maridvnvm and I each have some rare coins of Septimius Severus with matching dies.&nbsp; Many of the dies we see are immediately recognizable to us because we have seen a good percentage of all the dies used in the period of our interest.&nbsp; Several reverses are only known to us from one die so all examples that turn up are die matched.&nbsp; There never were many of these coins and fewer survive.&nbsp; On the other hand there are coins where it is a red letter day when you find a die match.&nbsp; The same type was made in huge numbers using enough dies that the issue could be called common if only a few examples of each die survived.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>There is a rare exception in the coinage of Pescennius Niger.&nbsp; A random sample of a thousand of his coins will show many more dies than a thousand Eastern mint Septimius from the first period when the two were fighting would show.&nbsp; We find fewer die matches in those coins. I take this as evidence that there once were many more coins of Pescennius than there are now.&nbsp; This supports the theory that Septimius outlawed the possession of the coins of his defeated enemy.&nbsp; Sometimes exceptions to rules prove interesting since we have to ask why.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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