I am of the opinion that the best way to have a fairly accurate rarity list is to go out and collect a full set. The process of chasing after a full set will give you an idea of what is more common and what is uncommon, rare, etc.

As I mentioned in another thread, the rarest of the rare are pretty much unobtainable, even when throwing money out and placing bounties. But a lot of people look at rarity in terms of value.

IMO, one cannot accurately compare rarity across systems, unless the rarities are adjusted somehow. As someone had mentioned elsewhere on NA, a R10 on Atari 2600 is going to be different than a R10 on NES, than a R10 on N64. Different production numbers, etc, though at the same time, they all *should be* the rarest that the system has to offer.

Likewise, I feel that comparing rarities within a system, yet across different types / regions, also lands us in the same pitfall, unless we take care to somehow once again adjust things. As an example:

Super Mario Bros. (USA) region has is R1 according to the database, whereas Super Mario Bros. (Asian) region is at R7. But I would suspect that the actual situation is somewhat different. Being one of Nintendo's most important game releases, compared to the other Asian region games, Super Mario Bros. probably has an equal / slightly larger product than less popular titles. And thus the rarity (imo) is a bit pointless, since the game is of course going to be rarer for an American trying to obtain it, whereas the folks in Indonesia are turning these carts up left and right. So the rarity should be adjusted to the region.

Or if the rarity is of games is going to be compared across regions, then things such as the single cartridge Sachen monochrome Game Boy games should easily be placed at rarities of 8+, most not even being confirmed to exist up through now.

Then we have the issue of comparing across class, licensed versus unlicensed (unlicensed generally will have a smaller production run) vs homebrew (and the limited edition homebrew has an even smaller production run). So if comparing across class, then I personally feel some rarities would have to be adjusted as well.

To sum it up, where '>' equals the term 'is rarer than', a one off homebrew > a gold NWC > Huge Insect > Flintstones, in actual rarity.

Also, I write the above not to criticize the NA rarity list, rather I just want to throw out what I perceive to be some of the shortcomings, and I am hoping it is some food for thought. While I recognize the need / use of a rarity list, I also see a lot of shortcomings with them, and think it could be useful / interesting to discuss these issues and ways to correct them.

The SNES listings definitely need a lot of work. DarkTone even reached out for here: http://nintendoage.com/forum/mess...

He made some of my recommended changes, but even that is just the perspective of one person. Perhaps it could be weighted to be 50% whatever the administration enters, and 50% from community ratings? (I'm assuming there is a field where you can enter your own custom rarities)

NECCRRROOO BUMP

Didn't want to start a new thread.

I'm curious people's thoughts on listings like Xmas 2008 and Huge Insect.

Supposedly 78 copies of Huge Insect were made. It's on the own list of 9 users here. But it's rarity is listed as only an 8.

I was recently told that <50 copies of Xmas 2008 were made (I have no way to confirm, but maybe someone does), and it's listed as a 9 rarity.

Meanwhile, Stadium Events, which has hundreds, maybe thousands of copies, is listed as a 9, and Myriad, which has what, like at least 888 copies, a 10.

You're not including the hype factor.

 I would understand for a lot of games without production numbers to use eBay data as a proxy, but if there is a good estimate of the # available, it seems odd to list one as a 10 and another that’s 10x+ rarer as an 8.