These
rarity questions continue to be a concern for all new and old collectors. One factor is that a collector who wants, say, a
Vot XX coin of
Constantine I has litterally hundreds of thousands of coins to choose from, but if you are looking for a specific coin, say
RIC VII,
Rome #319,
good luck finding it! (and if you do, be sure to let me buy it from you) Varieties are, in general, only important to a collector of varieties or a
numismatist interested in chronology of coin
types and dies. These
type of people are few and far between and there may be only 1 or 2 people in the world who care anything about all the varieties of
Vota coins out there. I do and have searched for 40 years now for all of the varieties listed in
RIC. As Joe noted above, I have all of the R to C3 coins listed inRIC
VII. I have 1 R1 coin left, 8 R2 and over 500 R3-R5 coins remaining to find. It is my contention that the
scale in
RIC is by far the best thing available for varieties of coins!!!!!!!!!!! It is not perfect. Many coins are more common now than the listing indicates. A few coins are less common because some of them were based on misleading sources. Very few are less common than stated if they were indeed viewed that many times! Unfortunately, with literally many many thousands of varieties, a
hoard of 100,000 coins may barely touch the surface for certain
types of coins. It may mean one or more
types that once were
rare become common.....relatively. Often, once these coins from a certain
hoard are dispersed, there are no more found for decades or longer and thus become
rare again.....in the short term. If you continue to collect and watch you will see the eb and flow of specific coins. You may never see a coin listed as common come on the market in your collecting lifetime...or you may see hundreds. There is a lot of luck involved in collecting. For instance, if I see a particular coin I want before you....guess what...you are never going to see it and the same goes if someone else sees it before I do.
As far as
Wildwinds goes, it is a fantastic resource and I commend Dave for doing a great job in keeping it going. But it is far far far far from being anything remotely close to
RIC as far as varieties of coinage. It doesn't even come close to having 10% of the
Vota coins I have in my
collection (which is more an indication of my laziness than Dave's dedication).
So, if you are interested in the relative
rarity of a
type,
Sear,
Wildwinds, VanMeter are all
good and where every coin collector should start. If you want to collect specific varieties within a
type,
RIC is your only
choice which has any indication of
rarity. You just can't trust it 100% of the time....but I would wager perhaps 90% of it remains viable and reasonable to this day which is hard to match even with our new found internet abilities!
Once you have been collecting an
area for a few decades, you become the only resource you really need for a relative
rarity scale. Until then, use whatever resources you have available to allow you to be as informed as possible on any question of
rarity or value you might have.
