THOUGHTS ON RARITY RATINGS

I’ve recently looking at some rarity ratings and I wonder if E-Sylum readers would like to express an opinion or two (or twenty :-) ). The question at hand is fairly simple:

There are a number of rarity scales. For the sake of discussion, let’s assume that you know for sure that the R-7 rating was intended to be relative to the following scale, which I think is the scale most commonly used in a number of areas, at least when it comes to exonumia:

R-1: 5,000+
R-2: 2,001-5000
R-3: 501-2000
R-4: 201-500
R-5: 76-200
R-6: 21-75
R-7: 11-20
R-8: 5-10
R-9: 2-4
R-10: 1 (unique)

Here are some possible answers for what “R-7” might mean:

• The writer knows for sure that 11-20 currently exist, period.
• The writer knows for sure that 11-20 existed at some point (the original mintage was 11-20).
• 11-20 unique specimens have been sold in the last X years.
• If you wait X years, you’ll probably have 11-20 opportunities to buy one.
• 11-20 unique specimens have been sold, ever (say, since 1850).
• A bunch of specimens are known to have been sold, but if you discount the ones that are definitely locked up in museums, there are 11-20 available to collectors.
• The writer found 11-20 pieces in survey of major collectors of the series.
• There are 11-20 nice examples available. There might be more, but all the rest are cruddy.
• The total population by the third-party grading services is 11-20.
• The writer found 5-10 auction appearances and assumes that they missed a few (or that there are some that have never been publicly sold).
• The original mintage was 30-50 and the writer assumes that some have been lost/melted/otherwise permanently gone.
• The writer thinks that this is rarer than pieces described as R-6, but doesn’t really intend to say anything about specific numbers.
• The original mintage was 50, but one guy has a hoard of 30 of them so those don’t really count.
• The writer doesn’t really know how many exist, but this costs the same as other items listed as R-7
• The writer just quoted a number from some other reference and doesn’t really have any opinion of their own.
• The writer just pulled a number out of thin air that doesn’t mean anything, and you should judge the item on its merits for yourself.
• etc
• etc
• etc
• (feel free to add your own)

If you want to look at the question from the other direction, what rarity would you expect to see for each of the following examples? FWIW, each of these are real examples of items that I found described as R-7. I picked items where the original mintage is known. The question gets a lot harder otherwise!:

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