Rareness factor.....

Peaceman

Can't find it in a search about the r-1...r-2...etc... and the breakdown......

Trooper

morgan and Peace dollars book page Vii

R1 Common -tens of mils
r2 Not so common- Several Mil
r3 Scarce- Hundreds of thous
r4 Very Scarce- Tens of thous
r5 Rare -Several thous
r6 Very rare- Several hundred
r7 Extremely rare- few tens
r8 Unique or nearly unique- Several

Tom

291fifth

Be very wary of claimed "R" numbers. Most coins are more common than you would expect.

Peaceman

Thanks

coinlieutenant

Peaceman,

Not sure if I am right or Trooper but I always thought it was like this.

R8- 1-2 known
R7- 3-12 known
R6- 13-30 known.

Maybe I am thinking about patterns though...

Peaceman

mmmmmmmmmm........... the new VAM that I had designated is a R-6........ how should I interpret that?

JrGMan2004

I thought only 2 were known??

SYRACUSIAN

Although Trooper's scale sounds more like the one I know, you will notice that there's a serious gap between R6 and R7. From few tens to several hundreds. Unfair for coins with a mintage of 100-200.

Trooper

Just so ya all know.
The number I gave in my previous reply were taken from the "Comprehensive Catalog and Encyclopedia of Morgan & Peace Dollars" by Leroy C Van Allen & A. George Mallis.

The info is on page viii under the Glossary of Abbreviations

Tom

davewang202

There are millions of Peace/Morgan dollars. Any such rarity rating are all estimated. Just like any other coins in any other series, it will take a while to flush out the coins.

If you're interested, look through and see how the "known population" of the 1879s PAF Morgans have grown in the last 2 years. VAM 34B wasn't known for 2 full years after the guide was published, then within a span of 4 months, 4 more shows up. Just two days ago, another VAM 23 shows up. So even if there were only 2 known.... as of this time.... the rarity rating is an estimation of how many there are in the general population. In another 20 years or so, these rarity rating may be revised, depending on how long people have looked, and how many are known to exist.

i.e. There are fewer 1879s VAM 6's known than 1879s VAM 25, yet VAM 6 is listed as R-6, while VAM 25 is listed as R-7. These rarity numbers were assigned at the time we took the initial population. Although it's flipped around now, no one knows if it will flip around in the future again, so the rarity numbers stay as they are, until someone can come up with concrete numbers to get them changed. There's always the possibility that some guy has an UNC roll of really rare R-7 coin in his safe deposit box. (Julian of Bonanza coins has nearly a full roll of slightly-rarer-than-normal R-5 1879s VAM 46. Too bad they're not VAM 25's. )

1879s PAF
spring 2002 update
Fall 2002 update
2003 update
2004 update

Wolf359

Scales of Rarity - different factors