Rare. Look, every seller has the right to list their coins the way they want. I am not against that in the least, except for the word "Rare". I come across listings all the time, I just saw a 9 sentence paragraph in which the seller mentions how "rare" the coin is 7 times.
Sometimes the coins are not that "rare", on some listing in which that word is used, there are sometimes 3-4 examples or more of the same exact coin.
One guy put his entire listing IN ALL CAPS, EVERY SINGLE WORD, and to make sure you got it he added numerous (3-4) exclamation points AFTER EACH SENTENCE as well. the word "RARE" was in nearly every sentence of course as well.
I personally have never used the word "rare" because of, in my opinion, of its overuse. I prefer to say "scarce" for rare coins and "very scarce" for REALLY rare coins.
It's none of my business of how sellers list their coin. I freely admit that. Its just irritating to me and I acknowledge that this irritation is just a personal fault of mine. I will say however that I tend to overlook such listings with such over-use of the word.
I am more than willing to admit that I am wrong with this viewpoint. I do pay more attention to the more modest seller listings that just list the facts, like Joe Friday of Dragnet. I can take the rare word several times but I just do not like it beaten into my head, especially if the coin is not really rare at all.
For myself, I consider a mintage of about 500 to be scarce and for mintages of 150 to be very scarce. This is my personal scale for modern world coins. I know that there are examples of older coins in which there may be an existence of only one or two or very few, these I consider to be "beyond very scarce" or "nearly one of a kind" or, yes, even "rare". I suppose that the phrase of "rare" or even "extremely rare" would be about the only time I consider the word rare to be appropriate in such examples.
Of course, there are the ones who claim their coin is "the only one on
ebay". most of the time this is true (for now, but in a week another example is listed).
More and more, I find myself on sites other than
ebay like great collections or stacks or heritage where they are not as hysterical when listing the coins they have. I believe that true professionals know how to get the information out there by listing just a few key facts and leaves it up the buyer to make his own judgements and leaves it up to the buyer as to what "rare" means to each individual person.
I have catalogs and can go to sites like the NGC population page to find out how "rare" a coin actually is, keeping in mind that Krause often does not mention the mintage figures.
A bit of background is that I sometimes write movie screenplays, where brevity counts. Over 130 pages for a full length movie can make you a dead duck. I guess the hysterical listings would count as long books or novels. My postings here are fun for me to write, so I often go the longer book route.
That being said, am I alone on this or am I just a nit-picky nut who has no cause to even bring it up? I don't mind a bit of hostility here because I realize a lot of you are sellers who would resent my outlook on this. I once chided a seller for this and he banned me and I don't blame him, but I would never have bought a coin from him anyways. One or two "rares" is enough for me, but I would rather just have some facts to go along with it, which are often lacking in such listings. I mean no offense, believe me, even if you are one of "those guys".
mike
Posted 08/10/2018 10:49 am
