BRITISH COINS Victoria, Threepence, 1868, reads rritanniar (SC 155). Good fine, cleaned, very rare (£80-100)

The ESC calls this error R3 (extremely rare), a vague assessment of the numbers now surviving but indidicating a population of more than twenty. Significantly, SC does not price the coin in grades better than very fine, which suggests that coins in higher grades, if they exist at all — and it would be presumptuous to rule out the possibility entirely — must be of the very highest rarity. The first example of this error (in any grade) the cataloguer can recall handling and possibly rarer than generally supposed.