What's the REAL definition of "rare"?

[travrosty]

Originally Posted by conor912

There are certain cards I have been looking for for years and not found a single one while at the same time a t206 Wagner (or two) comes on the block every six months. Expense aside, I would call that pretty readily available.

there is rare as in number of examples, and rare as in how often they come up.

if there is only one of something in the hobby, but it goes to auction every month by people flipping it over and over again,

for me rare is how many there are in the hobby. many times there is a correlation between how many there are and how often they come up but wagner is an anomoly in some respect because prices have been skyrocketing and examples get flipped more often because of it.

some of the people buying wagner are not hobbyists that would keep them in their collection a long time, but rather investors looking to flip them for a good profit a couple of years down the line, hence a fairly rare card being offered as available more often than they might otherwise be.