I posed this question about a year ago in regards to my Rocky. I’d been hearing for years that there were less than 100 fully operational Rockys out there, but there’s no way of quantifying that. Someone posted a good equation about how to determine the probability of scarcity based on the age of the game, production run, etc. but I can’t recall it exactly. You can easily find it on my thread “Question about the rarity of Rocky”. There have been recent comments on it so it should be fairly easy to find.

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/question-about-the-rarity-of-rocky

The way everyone is pricing machines right now would make you think they are all 'rare'.

Rare, NIB, HUO, all words that are now meaningless in this hobby

It's just like eBay, you can put rare in front of everything but that doesn't mean it's worth anything

What I've found with many of the general public when they hear I have pins, is...

"They still make those?
"You can actually buy them?"
"There's places to play them in public?"

And my favorite.... "Cool!"

So with that auction and its massive advertising, those prices are crazy and alot of people not in this hobby would think that they are rare, because to them, they seem rare.

NIB and HUO aren't straightforward? People are messing around when using these to describe? (Sorry, I'm legitimately asking, wasn't aware(!)...)

At an auction everything is rare and just needs 1 fuse and 1 switch blade adjustment to get it working 100%

RARE AND VERY SOUGHT AFTER, HURRY!!! DON’T LET THIS ONE GET AWAY!

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Yes. Tons. You need to look at more FS ads. You see it constantly. Heavily routed games or games out of the box are unbelievably advertised as HUO NIB

The only word that gets me anymore is "scarce"
I was recently asking two old timers about a game and they both said scarce!
I did find the game tho, took some serious doing, but I found it, so who knows?
B

I think the reason rarity doesn’t necessarily mean higher prices in pinball is because it’s a niche hobby.

I penned a very detailed explanation of rarity as it applies to pinball in that thread. It is definitely worth a read.

Ultimately, an item is worth what someone will pay. I own a business in which this has never been truer. I see it all the time: trash can sometimes get sold easily at a high price, and desirable items occasionally fall by the wayside. Marketing, knowledge, usefulness of the product, re-selling, and hype all contribute.

Yes, your explanation was the one I was referring to. It was very informative and helpful

And I think there’s a reason why a smaller number of some pins were made: they weren’t selling well enough because they weren’t very good pins.

You can thank Disney for ingenious marketing. Every edition of whatever they are selling is labeled with key words: Limited, Special, One Time, Commemorative, and so on. It's like a band and a final tour...there are multiple final tours by them. It drives up ticket sales.

People use the keywords in their Ebay, FB Marketplace and Craigslist listings. Let me tell you, 10,000 of each early SS machine is not rare or special. Rarity is in the eye of the SELLER.

Same with video games, outside of a few real rare promotional items or employees gifts most of the rare vintage games sold now were commercial failures and actually terrible games.
When the trend of collecting full sets started, these rare games suddenly saw their value sky rocket.

I have a simple way of judging a pin on rarity.

I go by production numbers only, year it was made does not matter, nor the theoretical percentage of whats left after so many years.

1500 made and above is "Common". Under 1500 made is "Uncommon". Under 1000 is "Rare" and under 500 is "Super Rare".

Just my 2 cents.

Over 3100 of these were made, seems rare to me. Toughest game I ever located.

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I strongly dislike using the word "rare". Yes, there are instances where the word applies, but in most cases, I prefer the word "scarce". A Gottlieb "Glamor" is rare. A Bally "Sheba" is scarce.

A lot of pin people are not on Pinside, so that is why I do not use their numbers, just the amount the factory made.

Like I said, just how I rationalize the term "Rare". Everyone is going to be different on this subject because it is very subjective, so not a big deal.

When I am selling a pin I base my price on what the market will bare anyways, not what people tell me my price should be because the pin is deemed, common, uncommon, rare, or other in their opinion.

Bottom-line, do what suits you.

As a teacher once told me, "Pay attention to what your doing, never mind what the other kid is doing". If I listened to her earlier I might not have got in trouble so often. LOL!

Which game?

Under 500 is rare, under 1000 is uncommon!
Super rare is like “10 made” prototypes.

Most my collection is “rare” games. Finding them is my favorite part. Digging deep and cold-calling is a ton of fun. The hunt is the best part of the hobby!

Numbers alone don't equal rarity.
There were supposedly only 235 copies of Gottlieb's " Pleasure Isle" produced, but I've come across three of them myself, and know several collectors who own one. Some games produced in the thousands just don't ever appear. Some of the sixties Bally titles, for example . I realize much of this has to do with distribution, as many of these Bally titles were shipped off to.Europe.

EMs tend to be totally different than SS. Back in the EM days trashing stuff after a year or two was common! They used to make 5k+ regularly for many of our classics! The rates which Williams, Bally, Gottlieb churned out EM games dwarfs modern production!

For sure there are rare games based on extremely low production numbers. A non-EM example would be "King Kong".

I own a 'rare' Pleasure isle that is being restored. It's a UK import too. Its cabinet was painted in blue gloss paint so I had to sand it all off before returning it to original artwork, here is a picture of its serial number:
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WARNING! Carguement alert!

I had a 66 Studebaker Cruiser for a few years. It was the last year that Studebaker made cars, so only about 2,000 were produced. Quite rare compared to the 66 Mustang with a production number around 600,000 but only a fraction of the value (and for many good reasons).