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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;cwtokenman, post: 142521, member: 2100&quot;]I was surprised to see the Hard Times tokens rarity scale not listed as it&#039;s use is fairly common.</p><p><br /></p><p>R1 - common</p><p>R2 - less common</p><p>R3 - Scarce</p><p>R4 - estimated 76-200 specimens survive</p><p>R5 - estimated 31-75 specimens survive</p><p>R6 - estimated 13-30 specimens survive</p><p>R7 - estimated 4-12 specimens survive</p><p>R8 - estimated 2 or 3 specimens survive</p><p>R9 - Unique (only one known)</p><p><br /></p><p>I could dig up many obscure rarity rating lists, as it seems most every author who included one must have felt a need to conjure up a new system. As The_Cave_Troll posted, that is what reference books are for. More than likely you will need a reference book to (id and) find the rarity rating anyway, and the rarity listings will be in the book. While some sellers provide rarity ratings as part of a description, there are enough errors made in providing such info that I put absolutely no trust at all in such descriptions. Often times the rarity rating is in err because the item has also been incorrectly identified. </p><p><br /></p><p>For instance, one common exonumia reference only lists the most common variety of Civil War token for each merchant. So many sellers of truly scarce tokens have incorrectly identifed their piece as a relatively common one. I love to see that catalogue referenced in a description.</p><p><br /></p><p>I did not verify this, but I am pretty sure at least on of my state merchant token reference books starts off with a known population of 20 (yes, twenty) or more as a &quot;common&quot; rating, and ratings become scarcer from there.</p><p><br /></p><p>On a side note, to comment a bit a to try to put some perspective on these low populations, it must be collectors of regular coinage the saying that &quot;another of the same coin will be along shortly&quot; when there is something about a coin deal that they may not like. I have not heard any exonumia collectors ever (seriously) say that, and many is the token I will never have an opportunity to purchase. It is believed that approximately one million Civil War tokens still exist, spread out over 12,000 + varieties, with around 75-80% of the varieties having known populations of 20 or less.</p><p><br /></p><p>For a comparison, most collectors would agree that a 1909-S VDB cent is scarce. In performing an ebay search just a few minutes ago for &quot;1909 S VDB&quot;, 240 results were found (additional ones via other similar but different search criteria not included). I made no attempt to determine how many auctions were actually for this cent, and not just, say, mentioned as hype in bulk lot descriptions. For comparison, the entire Civil War token category contained 239 results. In this case as well, not all auctions are actually for cwts, as some are for Hard Times tokens, reference books, and other miscellaneous exonumia. I find it somewhat interesting that the returned results were so close, so imagine the scarcity of market availability of a 1909 S VDB cent spread out over 12,000+ cwt varieties. This is admittedly a very crude comparison, but it should serve to provide some insight into finding/collecting scarcities of any type.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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