Are some cards too rare for their own good?

[darwinbulldog]

Originally Posted by steve B

Taken all together there's got to be thousands of rare cards to be had.

There's the rub, methinks. When the cards are so rare that most collectors are not aware of them those same collectors think of them as "one of those thousands of obscure rare cards" rather than, e.g., one of a dozen(?) Niagara Baking cards. And if it's just classified as one of thousands of oddball rarities then it doesn't seem rare enough to create excitement for collectors who aren't specifically into whatever particular thing it's a rare example of.

Same things happens if you follow sports. Watch Sportscenter pretty much any night of the year, and you'll hear about some incredibly rare feat that just happened in a sporting event earlier that day. Rare events happen all the time, which is to say rare events are pretty common. Any occurrence is rare is you specify enough criteria that have to be met.

And same thing (once again) with baseball cards. That's where the ACC has the big influence. It gives us a standard means of categorizing the cards so we can compare degrees of rarity without each coming up with our own arbitrary criteria.