The Deception Of "Rare".

Supply and Demand adds a wildcard layer on actual quantities.

There are obscure centuries old issues with quantities in the dozens but the base of people collecting them is still smaller so values are still rather low.

Then there are "rare" Morgan's that still have at least thousands floating around that can pull in $10k+ Because 10s of thousands of people want them.

The West Point ATB Quarters are today's 1950-D Jefferson. The mintages are similar, and the speed with which they are pulled from circulation guarantees an adequate supply of AU-UNC examples going forward. When the mild excitement wears off, I suspect they will be similarly priced, in the <$10 range.

What the mint achieved by releasing the West Point quarters only to circulation and not making them available in rolls or mini-bags for ATB program subscribers was to destroy the value of every now-incomplete UNC roll set of ATBs. This, in turn, will breed contempt for any future mint series program coins, and ultimately cost the mint profit. In short, it was a dumb gimmick by the mint.

"Rare" is badly overused, and "unique" is its sidekick. The sole legal 1933 Double Eagle is unique. The 1884 and 1885 proof Trade dollars are rare.

I have no problem with coins described as "condition rarities." Several Morgan dollars fit this description, with prices near melt below VF and prices comparable to cars or houses above AU-55.

Unfortunately, today's eBay-driven pop language definitions are as follows:
"Unique" means "It's the only one I've seen"
"Rare" means "I'm selling it"
"Scarce" means "I only have a dozen more"
"Valuable" means "I need the Benjamins"
"High grade" means "My blurry pics make it look better than the two-bagger it is"
"Gem+++" means "Whizzed with a Dremel Tool"
"Collector Grade" means "It's been collecting dust in my house, and I want it to collect dust in yours, now"

Years ago, a member of my local coin club got up during show-and-tell and described a very rare matte proof American Silver Eagle ( ASE) he had come across. He had never seen a similar example and so "knew" that it was a rare piece that must have mistakenly been released by the Mint. We were intrigued to say the least. When a few of us got the chance to examine the coin, we quickly realized that it was a regular issue bullion coin. True, it had a satiny finish like some matte proof coins have, but it was just a run-of-the-mill bullion ASE. (Almost all of them have the finish!)

It was a case of a collector of mostly world coins not being familiar with the piece and so deciding it was rare. I believe this happens often on ebay, Etsy and other on-line venues. The seller is unfamiliar with the piece he/she is offering and so describes it as rare. While I certainly agree that deception is the goal for some sellers, I do think that some are simply ignorant regarding what they are selling and know that folks like to buy "rare" things - especially at bargain prices!

Guys, unfortunately the English language is not nearly as precise as we need for our hobby. Checking dictionaries: rare, scarce, and uncommon are synonyms. The only thing we can agree on is that there is more common stuff than rare stuff. I think that we would agree that the terms: Common, very common, and abundant are ascending the scale, while rare and very rare descend the scale. But comparing common to rare, there is not agreed upon precision. is it 10 times, 100 times, 1000 times the numbers?

That is why collectors would be better off if they agreed upon a scale like the one presented by David Lawrence. We need an agreed upon language to make sense of vague language.

I think the scale given by @matthewvincent pretty much covers it, and allows us to drop vague adjectives like scarce and rare.

I am looking at a coin up for auction soon, where I can find about 10 examples that have sold in the last 8 years in auction databases I use. Since I could be missing some examples, that probably puts it somewhere around R5 level. Which is where one of the catalogs puts it.

I don't collect ATB Quarters, but I guess the ones in question might rank R2 on that scale? Also around where a 1909-S VDB would be, which sounds odd, but is accurate (it is a valuable coin, but not at all scarce, as pointed out by matthewvincent).

I have used the Sheldon Rarity Scale and have for about 42 years, and his scale was developed almost 70 years ago. On that scale Rare is defined as 31 to 75 known and that is how I use the word. This refers to absolute rarity not condition rarity.

fenton is right, rare doesn't always mean expensive. I have some very rare coins that are only a couple hundred dollars, and some common coins that are much more expensive