Operationalizing rarity
 

I'm wondering what number of copies of a card could exist before you would not label it rare. You can of course use ever more fine-grained distinctions and arrive at a reductio ad absurdum in which every baseball card in the world is unique, but if you were only getting as specific as Pose X of Player Y from Set Z -- would it be rare if there were only 1,000 copies of that card? Only 100? Only 10?

If you're inclined to say, well it depends on the set, and 100 total copies isn't rare for a single N172 pose but it is for a T206, fine. What I'm really wondering is what is the absolute smallest number for any card in any set that you think should disqualify it from being properly regarded as rare.

I'm going to say 7. I think if there are 7 or more copies of a card you should generally see one of them come up for sale at least every few years. If there are fewer than 4 copies of the card you can't count on seeing it come up for sale at all in the next decade. The mid-single digits are sort of a collecting sweet spot for maximizing the excitement:frustration ratio. I don't get excited about seeing an auction listing for a card, even one that I really want, if I'm expecting to see another copy pop up a few weeks later; but if it's a card I've been looking for and haven't seen listed in years, the moment I find the auction listing is more exciting than the moment I actually get the card in the mail (assuming I've won the auction, which I usually don't).

Anyway, my answer is 7.

I am going with 50

I'd say 10 or less is truly rare. More than 10 but less than 50 is scarce.

Does demand factor into the calculus at all? If no one wants an item, having 5 of them in the wild doesn't really feel like it's rare. Whereas if there are 50 but everyone wants one, it can sure seem rare.

And what about deliberate manufactured rarity? Some of these numbered modern pieces may be 1 of 5, but I'm not convinced that really makes it rare, particularly if there are hundreds or thousands of similar pieces that are 1 of 5.

No. I'm just looking for the lowest number that's rare in an absolute sense, regardless of how many people want it or how many were produced in the first place.

I would say single digit of a specific card. To me variations are a different card.
So 9 or less is rare
5 or less is extremely rare

But hopefully if it is rare it belongs to a member of this board except for Ruth or Jackson those need to be mine. Lol

+1

This is about what I would call it, somewhere between 25-50. I am surprised the answers so far are largely 10 and below; considering what I see routinely referred to as rare around here.

Valuable is separate from rare; rare only measures supply.

I wrote an article about rarity (creatively entitled "Rare..."). My definition of absolute rarity was few of the item in existence, hard to find in any condition at any time.

Absolute rarity is wonderful and complicated all at the same time. On the one hand, when you have a truly rare item, you have something truly special. Of course, the flip side is that the card is going to be a real bitch to replace, if you can replace it at all, should you sell or trade it away.

I am not sure I can pick a hard cut-off for absolute rarity, though. I mean if there are 21 examples of a card instead of 20, is it no longer rare? That seems to be an absurdly reductionist way of looking at it.

I guess for me the bottom line is that rarity is like obscenity: i can't tell you precisely what it is but I know it when I see it.

I think it is more than the absolute number that exist; it is the absolute number that are circulating. If there are 20 copies of a card that exist but 15 of those are in public collections like the HOF, Burdick Collection, Wharton Tigre Collection, various library collections, etc then the card is rare. If all 20 copies are floating around then it is just scarce.

The most important card in the hobby, the 52 Mantle, is neither scarce nor rare.

Never understood that.

If that's true, then it follows that if I were to acquire and hold every copy of the 1989 Upper Deck Ken Griffey Jr. it would become correct for one to call it a rare card. I think rare is just rare, whether all extant copies are currently up for auction on eBay or no copies have been offered for 100 years.

It depends on what we are talking about. If it's a type card to start with, then maybe 5 or less is rare, to me.
If it is from a mainstream set, that number can jump greatly. Then, there are other aspects of rarity, such as condition rarity. I hear there are more, vintage high grade cards being made every day....Tip- buy cards with bigger borders.

One of my favorite sets is a post-war regional / food issue, the 1953 Stahl-Meyer Franks. Only 9 comprise the set, but it's a condition nightmare. Case in point: Mickey Mantle. The current PSA pop report is:

AUTHENTIC--2

PSA 1 / 1.5 -- 50

PSA 2 -- 8

PSA 3 -- 1

PSA 4 -- 2

PSA 5 -- 0

PSA 6 -- 2

PSA 7 -- 1

PSA 8 -- 0

PSA 9 -- 1

PSA 10 -- 0

A fascinating breakdown. You can pound the table all you wish about absolute rarity, and count the Authentics and PSA 1s. Be that as it may, since most of them were issued within the package of frankfurters (having marinated in the not so nice greasy / watery hot dog juice and goo) as a package stiffener, the resultant "free prize" was a less than tantalizing PSA 1 - 2 right from the start. Long to short, when it comes to Stahl-Meyer Franks, CONDITION RARITY CARRIES AN IMMENSE AMOUNT OF WEIGHT (I.E. SPECIAL SIGNIFICANCE).

Food for thought.;) --- Brian Powell

Aren't there more than 10 Baltimore Ruths? I think whatever the number is, that card has to be considered rare. You never see it for sale.

Paul—I believe the number is nine or ten

Quick question on this.....

You have a rare card that is PSA and you prefer it in a SGC slab. When you crack it out and resubmit it for grading to SGC, what happens? Does SGC notify PSA to take it out of the registry? Or does it artificially increase the pop of the card by +1?

I'm guessing that both PSA and SGC have each other on their respective 'Blocked Callers List.'

John, my understanding is that the only way to get the pop and cert tables adjusted is to send the company the cracked-out label with a request to remove it. Makes sense to me; can you imagine the lunacy that would ensue if you could get a card taken out of a pop or cert report just for asking?

If I can’t afford a card, it is rare. At least in my collection.

Asking nicely :
 

.. Are you by any chance looking to adopt anyone ? Perhaps an older person ? It happens,

..

Mike,

I AM an old person. 🤙

I agree with Raulus. Rare for Barry Larkin (my main PC) is certainly less than rare for Griffey (occasional PC). Griffey might have a card #'d /100 that is more difficult to acquire than a card #'d /50 or even /25 of Larkin. So I agree that the number of people seeking a card should play some role in the mathematical formula of rare.

For the sake of your actual question, I would say for cards pre-1995 that the number is higher than 10. Maybe 25; maybe 50. This is because once you fall below 10, certainly below 5, you're almost talking about one of a kind. Rare to me doesn't mean one of a kind.

I think once we move into the late 1990s, manufactured rarity would reduce the total number. I'm not impressed seeing the same photo over and over again in different colors. I don't collect the rainbow as many modern collectors do. I would say 5 or 10 from 1995-present would be rare. Maybe even 1/1. Think of how many super refractors exist for each player. If a player like Acuna has a 20 year career, how many 1/1 cards will he eventually have? 200? 300? More?


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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.

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

Rarely offered Vs just 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.

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.

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.