What is your definition of "RARE?"

[betafolio2]

Originally Posted by Matt

I believe this is precisely what the population reports have done. "This is only 1 of 11 at this grading tier with only 3 higher..."

Matt, you nailed it! I see sellers on eBay using this information all the time to make their cards sound more exciting and desirable! But it doesn't work on me. And besides, I know (or can pretty well assume) that if there are, say, 5 of a given card at a given grade in a population report, there are probably twice or thrice as many actually out there in the world, or maybe more, because there are lots of collectors like me who have never submitted anything for grading and never will. Of course, PSA et al. would prefer to pretend that collectors like me don't exist. I guess you could say they don't consider US part of the population!