What makes a record rare (and what just makes it expensive)

Rarity and price are correlated, not identical. A record can be genuinely scarce and cheap because nobody wants it. A record can be common and expensive because a lot of people want it at once. Confusing the two is how people end up paying two hundred euros for something that will be reissued in eighteen months.

The numbers that actually mean something

The "have" count is the closest public proxy for how many copies are in circulation among people who catalogue their records. The "want" count is demand. The ratio between them predicts price movement far better than the current lowest listing, which is mostly noise from one optimistic seller.

Types of scarce

Small original press is the honest kind: five hundred copies, no repress, gone. Private press is scarcer still — someone paid for their own record and sold it at gigs. Test pressings and white labels are scarce by definition but often musically identical to a common release, so you are buying an object, not a sound. Withdrawn and recalled records are the strange tail: scarce for legal reasons rather than musical ones.

If the reissue would sound the same, you are collecting objects. That is fine — just know which hobby you are in.

What this means for digging

Obscurity Mode in Searcherbox weights low circulation and small labels, not price. The goal is to surface records that few people are playing, which is a different target from records that few people can afford.