Quote:
How rare are coins rated r5 in everyone's experience?
Not as rare as they sound but generally rarer than the other ratings. I guess if you're looking for a particular R5 you should resign yourself to having to wait a while before you find one but its not that hard to pick up any old R5 if you know what I mean.
It is though nice when you get one while attributing, it always put a smile on my face.
Here is a summary of the RIC rarity ratings - credit should go to Dane for compiling it
http://www.catbikes.ch/coinstuff/ri...m#ricratingsRIC I (New edition, 1984)
C: Common to very common
S: Scarce
R: Rare
R2: 11-15 known
R3: 6 to 10 known
R4: 2 to 5 known
R5: Unique
RIC II (late 1920's), RIC III (1930), RIC IV-1 & 2 (1934), RIC V-1 & 2 (1927/1933)
CC: Very common
C: Common
S: Scarce
R: Rare
R2-R5: "additional degrees of rarity" (R5 is usually unique)
RIC VI Rarity ratings (1967)
C2: Common in every major collection
C: In every major collection
S: In most major collections
R: 26-50 known
R2: 11-25 known
R3: 6-10 known
R4: 2-5 coins known
R5: Unique
RIC VII Rarity ratings (1966)
C3: more than 41 known
C2: 31-40 known
C1: 22-30 known
S: 16-21 known
R1: 11-15 known
R2: 7-10 known
R3: 4-6 known
R4: 2-3 known
R5: Unique
RIC VIII Rarity ratings (1981)
No information at all (at least, I can't find it!) Presumeably similar to RIC VII
RIC IX Rarity ratings (1933)
C3 - C: "increasing degrees of commonness"
S: Scarce
R - R4: "increasing degrees of rarity"
R5: UniqueI've not seen a list of the museums that were used to compile the figures but even if all the top European museums were used you would be lucky if that even made up 1% of the coins that were around and sitting in private collections and dealers stocks.
As a kind of rough estimate I would say maybe 1 in 100 of the coins I have had were R5. I didn't look for them, they just cropped up in random lots I bought.
Edited by bobbyhelmet
05/06/2014 7:15 pm
Posted 05/06/2014 5:33 pm
