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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;dougsmit, post: 1836645, member: 19463&quot;]Each volume of RIC uses different standards for assigning R values.&nbsp; For RIC VII, see page xix.&nbsp;&nbsp; All refer to the number of museums on their list that report having the coin.&nbsp; R5 here means that only one museum had one.&nbsp; R4 means that 2 or 3 did.&nbsp; C3 means that over 40 did.&nbsp; They made no effort to track specimens in private collections.&nbsp; I have seen people show five examples of an R5 coin just to make the point that they are not &#039;unique&#039;.&nbsp; These rarity ratings may be accurate and may be very misleading.&nbsp; If I found a hoard containing fifty identical mint state coins of a type previously unknown and gave them to a museum, they could share them with 49 of their friends making that coin completely unavailable in the commercial market but C3 in RIC VII terms.&nbsp;&nbsp; If I found a mint sack of 5000 identical coins of something previously R5, the coin would still be R5 unless there were a new edition of RIC AND several museums bought a coin.&nbsp;&nbsp; This is not as likely to happen in the UK where the government would make sure some of the new find got into the museums but it is a real possibility elsewhere.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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