Frank J. Wilstach, comp. A Dictionary of Similes. 1916.

Rare

Rare as a blue rose.
—Anonymous

Rare as a snowbird in hell.
—Anonymous

Rare as a sunflower in the desert.
—Anonymous

Rare as venison in a poor man’s kitchen.
—Anonymous

Rare as a winter swallow.
—Honoré de Balzac

As rare almost as hedge-rows in the wild.
—William Cowper

Rare as an Albino in Africa.
—W. R. Hereford

As rare to see the Sunne with-out a light, as a fayre woeman with-out a lover.
—John Lyly

As rare as wings upon a cat, or flowers of air, a rabbit’s horns, or ropes of tortoise-hair.
—Asian

Rare as a comet.
—James Ralph

Rare as a play that does not yawn you, or a woman that does not deceive you.
—Charles Reade

Rarer than a phœnix.
—Agnes Repplier

Rare to be found as black swans.
—Daniel Roger (Matrimoniall Honour, 1642)

Rare as the stars upon a clouded night.
—Louise Morgan Sill

Rare as a dodo.
—Robert Louis Stevenson

Like snow at Midsummer, exceeding rare.
—John Taylor

Rare as Homers and Miltons, rare as Platos and Newtons.
—Edwin P. Whipple