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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;dougsmit, post: 2410098, member: 19463&quot;]Part of the reason why rarity is no good measure of value in ancients is a failure for us to agree on what we mean by rare.&nbsp; Many late Roman rarities are rare because they have a dot in a different place or a workshop letter that usually was not used for that type or ruler.&nbsp; How much extra interest is added to a coin in a series you are not interested in owing the whole set by a dot?&nbsp; I would absolutely love to have a coin of the Papius rare symbol pair even if it were the most common of the 232.&nbsp; Those are really cool symbols.&nbsp; Included in the 232 are quite a number I consider boring and I really do not care if I have them or not.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>Martin and I each have a number of coins thought to exist in very small numbers (one to ten?) but many of them are variant combinations of dies not previously seen or spelling errors that occur on a die or two.&nbsp; Our favored Emesa mint seems to have combined obverses and reverses differently every day and there are obverse dies known with a dozen different reverses.&nbsp; When some of these dies have differences in spelling or spacing, rarities are born but the number of people (other than Martin and I) who care is not large.</p><p><br /></p><p>So, what is a difference that really counts?&nbsp; Does it matter that a coin is known to exist in a public collection but not in the trade where we can buy it?&nbsp; My example is this Julia Domna denarius listed as Cohen 250, RIC 634a from the one in the French National collection.&nbsp; The listings put it down as a &#039;hybrid&#039; of either Septimius or Pescennius but that reverse legend is known for both of them only with Victory walking and not seated.&nbsp; Again, is this coin not rare because there are two (one of which in every catalog because of who owns it) or because someone thinks it copies a type not known to exist makes it an error?&nbsp; </p><p>[ATTACH=full]497919[/ATTACH] </p><p><br /></p><p>If you are willing to accept small variations as rare:</p><p>Below are two variations of the very common Julia Domna type showing Venus from the rear.&nbsp; These commonly abbreviate VICTRICI as VICTR but these two dies spell it out.&nbsp; The second of them replaces the R&#039;s with B&#039;s.&nbsp; Are these coins (they use the same obverse die) different enough to be rare or just a boring spelling error.&nbsp; To bring notice in the ancient coin market, a coin needs to be rare and completely different as a minimum but it would help a great deal if the type was not only different but interesting.&nbsp; That explains how a coin known to exist in 100 examples (the Brutus EID MAR) is &#039;rare&#039; but things known from one example are boring.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]497920[/ATTACH] [ATTACH=full]497921[/ATTACH] </p><p><br /></p><p>Martin:&nbsp; Your Papius is the only one known of its symbol set.&nbsp; Of the 232 sets, how many are known from one example?&nbsp; What is the recorded count for the most common ones?[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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