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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;DonnaML, post: 4668565, member: 110350&quot;]Did you subtract the numbers for &quot;very rare&quot; and &quot;extremely rare&quot; from the &quot;rare&quot; total to avoid double-counting, given that the number of descriptions including the word &quot;rare&quot; presumably includes descriptions with either &quot;very&quot; or &quot;extremely&quot; preceding that word? If you didn&#039;t, the &quot;rare&quot; number should actually be about 150,000, or about 8.9% of the total number of records.</p><p><br /></p><p>I thought it might be interesting to do a similar search of ancient coins currently for sale on VCoins.&nbsp; Unfortunately, some common words like &quot;very&quot; are non-searchable.&nbsp; I was able to search for &quot;extremely,&quot; though.</p><p><br /></p><p>It&#039;s clear that some sellers are more likely to use certain words than others, whether because of puffery, or because their stock actually justifies use of those words more than other sellers&#039; stock -- and whether such greater use is justified because their stock is larger or for other reasons.</p><p><br /></p><p>Total number of ancient coins for sale: ca. 314,000</p><p><br /></p><p>&quot;Rare&quot;: Total 8,904, or 2.8% (including 701 described as &quot;extremely rare&quot;).</p><p><br /></p><p>Sellers that use the term &quot;rare&quot; most:&nbsp; Romae Aeternae 614, London Ancient Coins 576, Praefectus 505, Athena 345.</p><p><br /></p><p>Sellers that use the term &quot;extremely rare&quot; most: Athena 70, Numiscorner 58, Romae Aeternae 50.</p><p><br /></p><p>&quot;Scarce&quot; (which should theoretically appear more than rare, because &quot;scarce&quot; coins are supposed to be more common than &quot;rare&quot; coins): Total 2,893, or &lt; 1% (including 6 &quot;extremely scarce&quot;).</p><p><br /></p><p>Sellers that use the term &quot;scarce&quot; most: Coins to Medals 720 (compared to only 19 described as &quot;rare&quot;), Romae Aeternae 316, Universal Numismatics 269, Cyrus Coins 242, Aeternitas 236 -- and London Ancient Coins only 83, compared to their 576 described as &quot;rare.&quot;</p><p><br /></p><p>&quot;Unique&quot;: Total 185 (unable to search for &quot;perhaps&quot; or &quot;probably&quot; unique, but including 17 described as &quot;possibly unique&quot;).</p><p><br /></p><p>Sellers that use the term &quot;unique&quot; most: Athena 32, Ancient Coin Art 22.</p><p><br /></p><p>&quot;Unpublished&quot;: Total 717. Sellers that use the term &quot;unpublished&quot; most: Marc Breitspecher 153, London Ancient Coins 70, Numiscorner 64.</p><p><br /></p><p>Edited to add: Perhaps I shouldn&#039;t have to say this, but obviously I have no idea what criteria any given seller uses in applying terms like &quot;rare&quot; or &quot;scarce.&quot;&nbsp; I think it&#039;s unlikely, though, that many of them take the demand side into account -- not that I necessarily agree that they should have to, as opposed to factoring in the demand in their determination of price, and leaving terms like &quot;rare&quot; as statements only about supply -- or use the precise criteria set forth by Steve Album.&nbsp; I&#039;m sure some follow RIC, as outdated as the opinions on scarcity in its older volumes may be.&nbsp; (The meanings of &quot;unique&quot; and &quot;unpublished&quot; should be self-evident, with the caveat that the justification for using those terms is always &quot;to the best of the seller&#039;s presumably informed knowledge.&quot;)[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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