Operationalizing rarity

Mungo Hungo · #1 06-24-2023, 10:19 PM

Seems to me that rarity is based on how many opportunities there are to acquire the card. With many sets, especially somewhat recent regionals, the star players are less rare than the commons, because people pull them out and offer them for sale. They don't bother to do that for the other cards, making those cards, IMO, truly rare.

BuzzD · #2 06-25-2023, 05:14 AM

My general understanding is that rarity is an absolute or supply term and scarcity is a relative or demand term. An item is not scarce if nobody wants it even if it is very rare

JLange · #3 06-25-2023, 08:50 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mungo Hungo

Seems to me that rarity is based on how many opportunities there are to acquire the card. With many sets, especially somewhat recent regionals, the star players are less rare than the commons, because people pull them out and offer them for sale. They don't bother to do that for the other cards, making those cards, IMO, truly rare.

This is how I come at the issue of rarity as well. Over the years I have put my eyeballs on millions of items, and for my own collection I think of rarity in term of how often I have seen it come up for sale. Is the item available at any price once a week, month, year, 5yrs, 10yrs etc. An item that I can purchase only annually, on average, is still not rare to me, whereas something that comes up for sale once every 5 or 10 yrs is truly rare in my book. You only get that feel for opportunity by tracking availability over many years though.

Bigdaddy · #4 06-25-2023, 10:10 AM

For many years, the benchmark for "rare" was any unsigned Bob Feller item.

But if you are looking for a number, I'd put it somewhere between 25 and 50 for pre-war and vintage cards.

drcy · #5 06-25-2023, 10:29 AM

Rarity has nothing to do with demand. It is strictly a matter of numbers. Scarcity is a matter of supply and demand. There can be cards that are rare but not scarce (little to no demand). There are cards that are plentiful yet scarce (Demand far exceeds supply). Market value is a fair representation of scarcity.

The 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle is a card that is not rare but is scarce, as reflected in its high market value. A baseball card smeared in my dog's shit is a card that is rare but not scarce, reflected in that no one would want it or pay even a penny for it.

There is no objective numerical answer for what is rare.

Wrongly conflating scarity and rarity has been done a thousand times on this board. We have had threads like this with this wrong conflation tens of times. I've given this explanation of the difference between scarcity and rarity every time. Do some board members never read, or do they simply have mush for brains? Undoubtedly, I will have to cut and paste this post in the future, likely multiple times.

To repeat: Rarity and scarcity are not one and the same, and not to be conflated.

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