Just How Rare Is A Coin? A Case Of Serpent Drawn Biga

[Furryfrog02]

Ok, so I posted this over in the newest ancients thread a bit ago...but I have been super excited about this coin since I won the auction. I've been looking for various examples but am only coming up with the examples found in RPC and wildwinds with no others to be found (by me). 

Which brings my question: How rare is a coin and how do we really determine that rarity? 

First, my coin:

Gordian III
AE23, 5.61g
Bruzos, Phrygia
238-244 AD
Obverse: AYT K M ANTΩ ΓOΡΔIANOC, laureate, draped and cuirassed bust right
Reverse: BΡOYZHNΩN, Demeter, holding two torches, driving chariot right drawn by two winged serpents
Astarte, Young Collectors Auction 3, 20APR24, Lot 236, Price Realized: 28CHF

 

RPC shows 7 examples of my coin. https://rpc.ashmus.ox.ac.uk/coins/7.1/714. 4 of the coins are shown to be in museum collections and 3 are in private collections.

ACSearch showed 5 examples. 2 sales were the same coin that was bought in one auction, cleaned up a bit, and then resold in another auction a few months later. Here are the ones I could find starting with the oldest sales and going to the most recent:

 

Leu Numismatik AG, Auction 2, Lot 182, Estimate 250 CHF, Hammer Price 420 CHF (Almost double!)

This is example #6 on RPC: https://rpc.ashmus.ox.ac.uk/coin/92937

 

Numismatik Nauman, Auction 66, Lot 299, Starting Price 80Euro, Estimate 100Euro, Hammer price 500 Euro (WAAAAAAAY off)

This is example #5 on RPC: https://rpc.ashmus.ox.ac.uk/coin/93759. Wildwinds also uses this example. 

 

Then the same coin was cleaned up and auctioned 3 months later at Nomos Auction 17, Lot 297, Estimate 600 CHF, Hammer price 1000 CHF (again...WAAAY off)

 

Skip forward a couple years and another example sold at Papillion Numismatic Auction 4, Lot 345, Estimate 50 Euro, Hammer Price 100 Euro.

This is example #7 on RPC: https://rpc.ashmus.ox.ac.uk/coin/398152 

 

I found 2 other sales that don't have examples in RPC as well:
 

Heritage Auction, Lot LOT #61171, 03FEB21, Hammer price $840.

 

Lastly, Savoca 156th Silver Auction, Lot 176, Hammer price 240 Euro.

 

 

 

Beyond these 5 sales and the 4 in museum collections, I can only find 9 examples of this coin. Mine makes 10. Does this constitute it being rare? Or is it because it is rather obscure, nobody really tracks it?

 

I appreciate any insight you all may be able to provide. If you have any other examples you want to share, please feel free. Or share whatever "rare" coins you may have or winged serpents pulling bigas (because why not!)

[AETHER]

I can't help ya, but those snakes are terrifying 

[CPK]

Rarity with ancients is difficult to define. Going with a number count of specimens found in online databases like ACSearch and Coryssa gives a pretty good idea, but that can be skewed, as you pointed out. A rare coin type that is very popular often shows up more often in archives, references, etc. simply because more effort is made to acquire them.

However I would say that your coin is rare. Partly because those hammer prices indicate that it isn't really an obscure type, i.e. that there are enough people who actively pursue them to bring them to the market and drive prices up pretty high. And 19 specimens total, across archived sales history and references, isn't very many at all. Congrats on the acquisition!

[Broucheion]

19 hours ago, Furryfrog02 said:

Does this constitute it being rare? Or is it because it is rather obscure, nobody really tracks it?

Hi @Furryfrog02,

in my collecting experience I would call your coin “scarce.” I once had a dealer say that rarity was a relative term because “there are only 3 known specimens of that coin, but the two people who collect that issue already had one.” He wasn’t trying to be funny.

- Broucheion 

[Furryfrog02]

1 hour ago, Broucheion said:

Hi @Furryfrog02,

in my collecting experience I would call your coin “scarce.” I once had a dealer say that rarity was a relative term because “there are only 3 known specimens of that coin, but the two people who collect that issue already had one.” He wasn’t trying to be funny.

- Broucheion 

This is kind of what I was thinking too. Not a lot around...but not many people necessarily collect them. Of course, in this case, it seems like there is some sort of demand there since each one has sold for multiples over the estimate. I don't know haha. I like it and that's what matters to me in the end 🙂

[Victor_Clark]

1 hour ago, Furryfrog02 said:

it seems like there is some sort of demand there since each one has sold for multiples over the estimate.

 

You shouldn't put too much stock in estimates as some auction houses put them very low.

[Deinomenid]

23 hours ago, Furryfrog02 said:

How rare is a coin and how do we really determine that rarity? 

I honesty don't know but Hoover guides sometimes quote someone who did  various studies to try to put  numbers to it. I don't know how controversial this  is, but for what it is worth, and I've seen this quoted across Greek and Roman (Houghton was a Seleucid specialist if that makes any difference, but this quote is from Hoover Sicily) -

 

 

[John Conduitt]

Rarity is an artificial construct. It depends on what you and other collectors count as different coins. A different die, legend spacing, legend variant, issue mark, or a bust facing the other way may or may not make it a different coin and so rare or common. The more detail, the rarer the coins become. You get this a lot with Celtic coins. Chris Rudd lists 8 North East Coast staters, 4 South Ferriby staters and 4 similar staters, many rated excessively rare. But as they say, all these were "in fact one large series of coins which extended over many years." So if you count them all as one type of coin, they are very common.

Then, there are relative perceptions of rarity. With modern coins, 'rare' can mean there are 2,000 of them. With ancients, that is near to the most common. I think generally, rarity scales count a coin with under 50 known as rare, with any further adjectives depending on how many more categories the scale has (very rare, extremely rare, excessively rare, unique).

I created my own scale while trying to understand how this all worked 🤣 In doing so, I summarised other scales. As you can see, rarity is relative and depends on the subset being collected.

Edited May 2 by John Conduitt

[mcwyler]

22 hours ago, John Conduitt said:

Rarity is an artificial construct. It depends on what you and other collectors count as different coins. A different die, legend spacing, legend variant, issue mark, or a bust facing the other way may or may not make it a different coin and so rare or common. The more detail, the rarer the coins become. You get this a lot with Celtic coins. Chris Rudd lists 8 North East Coast staters, 4 South Ferriby staters and 4 similar staters, each anything from very common to excessively rare. But as they say, all these were "in fact one large series of coins which extended over many years." So if you count them all as one type of coin, they are very common.

Then, there are relative perceptions of rarity. With modern coins, 'rare' can mean there are 2,000 of them. With ancients, that is near to the most common. I think generally, rarity scales count a coin with under 50 known as rare, with any further adjectives depending on how many more categories the scale has (very rare, extremely rare, excessively rare, unique).

I created my own scale while trying to understand how this all worked 🤣 In doing so, I summarised other scales. As you can see, rarity is relative and depends on the subset being collected.

 

 

Interesting list. 

Rarity should be absolute and measurable, but it's not. 
My main focus at the moment is campgates. They're plentiful, normally easily found cheaply, and there are hundreds of types to search for, what more could a collector want? 

Just this morning I received this in the post:

Constantine I AE follis of Arles. AD 329. CONSTAN-TINVS AVG, pearl-diademed head right. / VIRTV-S AVGG, campgate, six rows, dots in arches in top row, 4 turrets, star above, no doors. T-F across fields. Mintmark PCONST. RIC VII Arles 336; Sear 16311.

If my attribution is correct, it's an R5 rarity in RIC, and it's by no means my first R5 campgate.  Are they really that rare? I do keep my eyes open but I see quite a few in auctions that are rated R3 or rarer. 

They were rated before the Internet, before ebay (the source of this coin) and before metal detecting was really a thing. And perhaps museums, the collections on which RIC was largely based, may be more interested in getting that aureus than collecting all the myriad variations of the fiddling small change of the Late Roman Empire. 

If the coin shown here happened to have open doors and S F across fields rather than T F, it would be rated common. Does anybody care? Apart from me, that is! Well yes I think many of us do, we're a strange lot...

[Hrefn]

On 5/1/2024 at 8:02 AM, John Conduitt said:

It depends on what you and other collectors count as different coins.

Yes!  And the degree of difference in Modern coinage can be very minute, indeed.  A Lincoln cent struck in 1909 from the San Francisco mint can command a price a hundred times that of an average coin, if the engraver’s initials are on the die.   This is a detail which is virtually imperceptible unless one is specifically searching for it.  A 1913 Liberty nickel is indistinguishable from one dated 1912, except for the last digit of the date.  Yet the most recent one to change hands sold for 4.2 million dollars.  In the world of machine-made coinage, trivial differences assume vastly inflated importance.

In our collecting field, every hand cut die constitutes its own variety.  Whether those differences rise to the level of significance, as you say, it depends.  I recently lamented that solidi of Theodosius the Great showing Constantinopolis with a mural crown do not seem to be distinguished from coins showing her with the more common crested helmet.  Certainly, I find the variety of great interest, but an insufficient number of collectors share my opinion to move the market.  Perhaps everyone who wants one already has one.  @Broucheion’s dealer’s observation is probably on point.  

 

[Qcumbor]

On 4/30/2024 at 10:22 PM, Broucheion said:

I once had a dealer say that rarity was a relative term because “there are only 3 known specimens of that coin, but the two people who collect that issue already had one.”

Absolutely. I have several coins from the Dombes principality about which no one on earth would give a shit (apart from me), including two unique to date gold ones, that would make me a millionaire were they 19th century US

And I'm glad no one cares, as I couldn't aford them otherwise

Q

[dougsmit]

On 5/2/2024 at 4:26 PM, Qcumbor said:

And I'm glad no one cares, as I couldn't aford them otherwise

Q

I am reasonably certain that a group of people I would call my 'coin friends' (those who love their coins, not what they might bring at auction) could put together a sizeable collection of coins that are not known to exist otherwise but that would, as a group, not sell for enough to warrant their inclusion in a big name sale.  

 

On 5/2/2024 at 4:26 PM, Qcumbor said:

  On 4/30/2024 at 4:22 PM, Broucheion said:

I once had a dealer say that rarity was a relative term because “there are only 3 known specimens of that coin, but the two people who collect that issue already had one.”

That was always the favorite quote in my opinion.  Second place went to "There is nothing more common than a rare ancient coin."  If we define the EID MAR denarii as "rare" and accept the guesstimate that there are a hundred of them known to exist,  we who post here could assemble thousands of coins each more rare than the Brutus.   The problem would be finding a handful of people who would care. 

[Alegandron]

On 5/2/2024 at 3:26 PM, Qcumbor said:

Absolutely. I have several coins from the Dombes principality about which no one on earth would give a shit (apart from me), including two unique to date gold ones, that would make me a millionaire were they 19th century US

And I'm glad no one cares, as I couldn't aford them otherwise

Q

Agreed, Cuke, but I would probly give you TWO SHITS for some of your great coins. 😄