And all those chips listed as "mint" get me. I've been licking chips and not one tasted like mint. I've been cheated! ;-)

Scarce, Rare, and those Obsolete chips, that are still in play on the tables, are a real laugh.

The Seymour scarcity covers it pretty well. Extremely Rare/often one of a kind, Rare, Scarce, Uncommon, Average, Common, Very Common.

So scarce is just a little more common than rare, but the next group would still be uncommon.

Most of the items, not just chips, listed on eBay as Rare would fall into the Average catagory. When you see three ads for something and look at closed auctions and find ten more, I wouldn't call that rare!

As someone else mentioned, when I have a stack of 20-30 traders, I don't think that's rare either. lol

How about the chip below? Is it rare? (I think not) but I would call it uncommon since you would have to go to the hills of Paraguay to get one, and the casino watches them very carefully. Lets call it scarce. Guess what, that doesn't change the value since there is no demand.

Rare, Scarce, event Mint is nothing but puffery.