Re: [SWCollect] Rarity Scale

[C.E. Forman]

> I love the idea. While a clever acronym I'm not sure what is more > rare than 'unique', let alone what word starts with 's' that embodies > that. I'd suggest just letting 's' stand for 'scale'. Of course then > you run into usage like "ATM Machine" (where if you expand the acronym > the sentence sounds silly).   Someone (another collector I think) once told me the term for this is a "neoplasm".  Which to me always sounded like something that oozes out of Keanu Reaves in The Matrix.  B-)  Personally it doesn't bother me, but we could always use the word "standard" instead of "scale".  Or "scarcity", etc.   > As for rarity assessment wouldn't production numbers be needed? I mean > there are loads of worthless games out there that you never see on ebay > because no one would buy them, not that they are uncommon. Also the > effect of one game selling well tends to 'scare' other copies up for > auction. Someone commented that its hard to find "Black Magic", but I > found it in the first 30 days of looking. But its possible that if one > or two of these sold that others may follow.   I'm sure we could talk to some of our authors and get estimates on production numbers.  Though in some cases, a lot of unsold copies were probably destroyed, especially around 1983-84.  We'd also have to take into account the ease of keeping the box all this time: The inner materials from the Starcross saucer turn up more than the outer packaging because a lot of players tossed it.   > Still, I don't think that stops us from taking a swing at it. Start > with a list, and amend it over time. Its bound to be a little off until > it gets some feedback into it.   Yeah, it'd definitely be a continuous project.  If somebody found a whole pallet of something once considered uncommon, it'd crash-dive the scarcity and probably the value too.  I like the idea of a bunch of us contributing our own personal observations and averaging them out.   > I'd humbly suggest the original Akalabeth and Mt. Drash would be > "Oddity". Stuff like Starcross and Suspended would probably be > "Imaginary".   Hmm, I was thinking Imaginary could be reserved for rumor-mill items, things that were either unreleased or exist only in prototype form (Activision's "Leather Goddesses 3", the unreleased Electronic Novels "House of Changes" and "Deadly Summer" from Br0derbund, etc.)  Or things that were believed to possibly exist but hadn't been discovered yet, i.e. Drash for 10+ years.   So, from most common to least, would the ratings go: Common, Uncommon, Oddity, Rare, Unique, Imaginary?  Or would they be in the order of the letters in the word?   > What'd be *incredibly* cool would be to get the grading scale and the > rarity scale integrated into ebay :) They have drop-downs for lots of > other things, why not this?   eBay would never go for it, it makes too much sense.  B-)  What might be good is an online repository that could be easily queried from a scripting language; that'd let a bunch of people's websites easily integrate it, while only having to update at one point.