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identify7A diamond is a rare and precious commodity, particularly if it is near perfect and sized one carat and above. Particularly in downtown Bumfk. However, in Manhattan in the upper 40s on the west side, they are less rare. And to Andrew Coxon, President of the De Beers Institute of Diamonds these items are not quite so rare. But rarity is a quantifiable term. And the truth is that diamonds are plentiful, except for special cases.
The same is true for baseball cards. They are plentiful, except for special cases. Sellers often employ relative terminology to characterize some of these special cases in their descriptions of cards. Terms including “rare”, “very rare”, ‘scarce” and other descriptors are employed to communicate the relative abundance of some issues. But this terminology is inexact. And perhaps our awareness is insufficient to be more definitive.
Some collectors have a focus on the rarity of the choices which they select for inclusion into their library of cards. Although, that criteria is not a primary focus of mine, I have elected to avoid bidding on cards which appear too frequently (this could be due to popularity, as well as commonness). And I wish that we had a tool to establish the absolute number of individual cards which are known to exist in every set.
A portion of our sister hobby, coin collecting, has gone to extreme effort to establish this information for many coin varieties. They have actually traveled (when appropriate) to each coin in order to photograph it for documentation of its existence and condition (of course, this applies only to the rarest or highest condition coins). And as a part of a typical coin’s sale description is a numerical designation of that unit’s relative rarity. For example:
R1 = common
R2 = 501-1250 known
R3 = 201-500 known
R4 = 116-160 known
R5 = 46-60 known
R6 = 19-24 known
R7 = 7-9 known
R8 = 2 known
I suppose that although this detail may be desirable to some baseball card collectors, it is easy to wish for something, but entirely different to actually make it so. But I betcha that there are some persons knowledgeable enuff to take a stab at a proposed set of rarity definitions for many sets and individual cards.
If this is so, then the outstanding effort could simply become one in which each supposition would need to be disproved. A far simpler task, and one with far less urgency.
Anybody have a guess regarding how many t206 Wagners exist? Anyone care to tabulate the guesses?