Well, with some collectibles, you can go into manufacturing variations. Here's a real-world example: http://maibockaddict.com/1831-capped-bust-half-dollars.sht

Well, with some collectibles, you can go into manufacturing variations. Here's a real-world example: http://maibockaddict.com/1831-capped-bust-half-dollars.shtml http://maibockaddict.com/1831-capped-bust-half-dollars.shtml The 1831 date as a whole had a production run of a bit under 6 million, but it can be broken into 20 widely recognized sub-types. These have established survival/rarity figures from surveys of the market and community-- some are "two dozen or so known" and some are "hundreds or thousands". It feels like they're trying to mimic the concepts from the coin hobby-- numeric grading, the appearance of third party certification and encapsulation-- without developing the background and ecosystem for it first. For example, those "20 sub-types" trace back to a paper book originally published over 50 years ago, actual research performed by a passionate expert which has been expanded on by the community. The grading conventions are even older.