The word 'rare' has about as many definitions as there are people on this planet. One man's 'rare', however, could well be anothers' 'also-ran'.
Rare is a 'hot button' word that has a lot of clout in terms of influencing buyer behaviour. It relates to how we perceive 'scarcity' and just as the image in this post will at first be perceived to be warped, careful examination reveals another truth.
The word 'rare' can warp our perceptions just as the above image does. It has about as much power as the words 'free' or 'sex' and belongs to a family of words that have been proved to trigger certain forms of human behaviour.
Rarity is also a concept much open to abuse by sellers who use it as part of their speil to hook the unwary and unsuspecting.
In this essay on rarity, I explore its meaning as it applies to collecting OMega Constellations and offer a set of criteria that may be useful in determining comparative rarity of various Constellation models
I enjoyed your essay. I have a friend who is such a collector of comics and has a short list of "rare" items which he never buys as they are so much more expensive than the others. I believe he once told me the same thing you wrote about: that they printed the same number of issues, but one is worth so much more than another because of content or supposed value. I have recently started collecting vintage records myself; a whole 'nother story. ;)
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