Browse by Rarity

The categories used here are defined in “Ancient British Coins” by Elizabeth Cottam, Philip de Jersey, Chris Rudd, and John Sills.

The absolute number of coins of any particular type isn’t known for certain, so I’ve based my rarity figures on the following:

• The numbers given in “Divided Kingdoms: The Iron Age Gold Coinage of Southern England” by Dr. John Sills augmented by my own records
• If that’s not possible, then I use the numbers given in “ABC” augmented by my own records. This book is 10 years old at the time of writing, so a number of the values are known to be out-of-date
• If that’s not possible, then I use numbers given by dealers, augmented with general internet searches and auction searches. This is mainly required for non-British coins

These ratings are ultimately just rough guidelines. There’s no way to know how many coins came straight out of the ground into people’s collections, or have been sitting for years in a collection and are not published anywhere.