The California pinball auctioneer has been calling a lot of fairly common games “rare.” But rare doesn’t mean valuable, and to collectors, rare has been a tricky word to define.

For example, I own a Mystic Marvel game. There are 8 Pinsiders who list the game in their collections, and two public places where you can play this game. I know of two other Mystic Marvel games in collections not accounted for on Pinside. There were 1,050 games manufactured back in 1954.

By my math, that means roughly 1% of these games can be accounted for, and that doesn’t take into consideration their condition. That kind of scarcity makes this game seem pretty rare to me.

I know some games are even harder to come by, but that seems to be the best example in my possession.

How do you evaluate scarcity, and is there a good rule of thumb for gauging the number of a title likely to be still in existence?

Charlemagne1987 Thanks for commenting. It’s weird how a rare, desirable pinball game doesn’t seem to get the same love as a rare Austin-Healey or Corvette. If there were only 1% or 10% of one of those car models remaining, it would drive up prices. That doesn’t seem to happen in pinball. I wonder why?

I understand there’s no way to firmly calculate a number of games still in existence. Value is also tricky. I have no great interest in Rocky, so I’d be unlikely to pay big bucks. On the other hand, I’d probably pay anyone’s asking price for games on my wishlist. For some reason, a lot of collectors disagree — they’ll bargain just to knock $50 off the seller’s asking price, as though that amount makes all the difference.

I’ll take a bargain when I can get it, but there’s never been a time I’ve added a game and worried about spending a few bucks more for a good example.

Some of the California prices are shocking, for sure. After all, most of the titles are available elsewhere. None of the Banning games are extra-special, just well-marketed. But what makes some of us scratch our heads at high prices makes others happy to own a desired game.