What is comparitively scarce?

[old.s.bottles]

Is it one notch above common on the scale of scarcity?

 

[cowseatmaize]

Is it one notch above common on the scale of scarcity?

I'd say yes but it depends on the book your looking at. If the book is 30+ years old it's probably been downgraded by now.

 

[old.s.bottles]

ummm, yeah it's 30+ years old. []

 

[cowseatmaize]

Ring and Ham have an update and there are a lot of common that used to be scarce. McKearin is the same, some of the scarce and rare should probably go as common if a new one was to come out. Common should be listed as Ultra Common.
One odd thing is that so many are just changing hands. A true number will be hard to determine.

 

[webby]

Interesting that some rare bottles are worth so little.
And some common ones are worth so much.
Demand, demand, demand !!!

 

[Road Dog]

I'll take rare and less valuable any day.[]

 

[Steve/sewell]

Here is my take on the different rating scales seen in our hobby.What was written about and determined 50 to 60 years ago still holds true.There are more collectors now and with the electronic internet age age of the last 25 years it would appear there are more bottles then previously thought but that is not necessarily true.Here is a good rule of thumb.I will use the historical flasks category to explain.With the amount of people collecting historical flasks ALL historical flasks are rare period.One can do the simple math of collectors to bottle ratio.Lets take the Jenny Lind bottles which if you average the amount of each of the 9 molds in the calabash style ranging from common to mostly comparitivley scarce to a couple of scarce to rare and to very rare the middle would fall between comparatively scarce and scarce.So a good rule of thumb would be there are anywhere from 200 to 300 Jenny Lind flasks in each category.Now logically the amount of historical flasks collectors being 1000 or greater in our country would make every single Jenny Lind calabash flask rare even if only one third of the historic flask collectors desired these bottles.At the end of the day as our hobby continues to grow the historical flasks are a good bet as an investment aesthetically and financially as they will only become rarer and go up in value over time.

Here is another example of scarcity in 1822 Dr Dyott listed 3000 Ship Franklin / Masonic bottles for sale at 62 cents a dozen.The Mckearins rated this bottle as common at 150 or more.I have a theory as to why I dont think there is anywhere near that amount that have survived today.Dyott was a huge fan of cullet and probably offered a good amount of money for bottles if returned to his factory.This coupled with breakage along with the ones buried in the earth make this a rare flask.I believe this is also the reason that his embossed Dr Robertsons medicines which were made by the 1000s are also so rare that people simply brought them back and they were either refilled are thrown to the cullet heap.Over time I think a lot of old bottles from the 1810 to 1840 time period were sent to the cullet heap. In summary Historical flasks are your best bang for your buck as for value and rarity.Bitters are also a good investment because of their flamboyant styles and names.

 

[GuntherHess]

rarity is an indicator of value but rarity alone doesnt dictate a high value.
same with age.