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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Valentinian, post: 1972456, member: 44316&quot;]The author of ERIC II, Ras Suarez, blogged on rarity:</p><p><a href="http://dirtyoldcoins.com/Roman-Coins-Blog/?m=201407" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://dirtyoldcoins.com/Roman-Coins-Blog/?m=201407" rel="nofollow">http://dirtyoldcoins.com/Roman-Coins-Blog/?m=201407</a></p><p>It is a difficult topic. I responded today (copied below) and long ago I wrote a long editorial about rarity for Coin World:</p><p><a href="http://esty.ancients.info/numis/rarity.html" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://esty.ancients.info/numis/rarity.html" rel="nofollow">http://esty.ancients.info/numis/rarity.html</a></p><p><br /></p><p>I don&#039;t expect us to come to agreement on a definition of &quot;rare&quot; but the relevant factors can be exposed and considered.</p><p><br /></p><p>My &quot;comment&quot; to the&nbsp; blog post is repeated here:</p><p><br /></p><p>We need to decide on a classification scheme before the term &quot;rare&quot; has a clear meaning. Are we talking about &quot;all coins of some emperor&quot; or &quot;all coins of that emperor with this particular reverse design&quot; or &quot;all coins of the emperor with this particular reverse design and specific mintmark in exergue&quot; or &quot;all coins of the emperor with this particular reverse design and specific mintmark in exergue and marks in the field (possibly right versus left).&quot; That is how the term &quot;rare&quot; can be misused without quite lying. Pick the minor variety with full details and many coins are &quot;rare&quot;, but not necessarily as a &quot;type&quot; (main design, not counting field marks and minor variations). Consider the extremely common AE3 of Valentinian with GLORIA ROMANORVM reverse. Overall, it is one of the most common Roman &quot;types&quot; of all. But RIC lists 5 pages of mintmark and control mark variety details for the Siscia mint alone! Someone may say that, including the specific details, their coin is &quot;rare.&quot; But that is so misleading as to be kin to a lie. </p><p><br /></p><p>So, if we are talking of the entire output of an emperor and it is only a very small fraction (say, 1%) of the output of, say, Constantine, then we might begin to think the emperor is &quot;rare&quot;.&nbsp; That fraction in ERIC II would be the number (about 156) of coins for Marius, Orbiana, and Aemilan. They are rightly called &quot;rare&quot; with numbers far larger than those proposed in the blog. Of course, that is because rarity is relative to the category--you must decide on the category first.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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