Dear AB,
I partially agree with your reasoning ref the term rare. It is thrown around quite commonly, especially in sales threads and on some dealer sites! But I would have to also say that there are varying degrees of rare. A Oaks/Swds is much rarer than Oaks which are coorespondingly much rarer than an RK. In the same sense a Parade Mounted War Merit medal is rarer than an RK. I guess you could also use the term scarce forthis piece which is more "common" than a rare piece but still hard to find.
Although some people choose to use the following scale (Scarce, rare, very rare, extremely rare....and of course dont forget the mega rare!) I have always advocated the standard numerical rarity index that is used throughout most of the collecting community (outside of medal collecting). It is most commonly used in card collecting and coin collecting and is a scale from, as I recall, 1-10. Each number corrresponds to the estimated number of pieces in existance. So a Rarity Number of 10 might indicate only 2-3 pieces known to exist. Although this index would be simple to use for some pieces i.e. Oaks, Oaks Swds; coming up with an estimated number of parade mounted WMMs might be a bit difficult!
Gary B
I partially agree with your reasoning ref the term rare. It is thrown around quite commonly, especially in sales threads and on some dealer sites! But I would have to also say that there are varying degrees of rare. A Oaks/Swds is much rarer than Oaks which are coorespondingly much rarer than an RK. In the same sense a Parade Mounted War Merit medal is rarer than an RK. I guess you could also use the term scarce forthis piece which is more "common" than a rare piece but still hard to find.
Although some people choose to use the following scale (Scarce, rare, very rare, extremely rare....and of course dont forget the mega rare!) I have always advocated the standard numerical rarity index that is used throughout most of the collecting community (outside of medal collecting). It is most commonly used in card collecting and coin collecting and is a scale from, as I recall, 1-10. Each number corrresponds to the estimated number of pieces in existance. So a Rarity Number of 10 might indicate only 2-3 pieces known to exist. Although this index would be simple to use for some pieces i.e. Oaks, Oaks Swds; coming up with an estimated number of parade mounted WMMs might be a bit difficult!
Gary B
This is a pre-1943 bar as the KVM is mounted after the Hindenburg Cross!
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