Rarity is the April Fool's joke here, right?

[Candlewhisper Archive]

Looking at things, packs contain around 3-4 commons and at most 1 rare, epic, ultra-rare or legendary.

But of course, there are way more nations of common category than any other.

So actually, is it the case that the "rarest" cards are actually the ones that are most common? Take for example my nation, which is supposedly legendary, but 44 copies are in existence.

Even accounting for commons being frequently trashed, my thinking here is that actually the whole rarity thing is Max's little satire on capitalist culture.

That is, something that is actually less scarce becomes seen as more valuable and scarce because it gets assigned an arbitrary value, and this perpetuates its value.

So a common card like this one...
https://www.nationstates.net/page=deck/card=1796878
...actually only has 8 copies in existence, while a rare card like me has 42, so actually it's ME that is the common, and that card that is the rare.

[Liliumtopia]

But yours is shiny!...

...okay, that's actually a really interesting theory.

[Mithea III]

You posting that common cards makes me want it, so I have placed a bid.

[RunDown]

Is it because the pool from which to draw on is not balanced? If you get a legendary, you get one of 40. Where as a common is one in 2,000,000. So the legendaries are rarer than commons, but there are so few of them to actually get that they seem to be more common.

[Viseugal]

I'm guessing rarity has more to do with your different world ranks, and not necessarily how likely you're to get them.

[Destructive Government Economic System]

Looking at things, packs contain around 3-4 commons and at most 1 rare, epic, ultra-rare or legendary.

But of course, there are way more nations of common category than any other.

So actually, is it the case that the "rarest" cards are actually the ones that are most common? Take for example my nation, which is supposedly legendary, but 44 copies are in existence.

Even accounting for commons being frequently trashed, my thinking here is that actually the whole rarity thing is Max's little satire on capitalist culture.

That is, something that is actually less scarce becomes seen as more valuable and scarce because it gets assigned an arbitrary value, and this perpetuates its value.

So a common card like this one...
https://www.nationstates.net/page=deck/card=1796878
...actually only has 8 copies in existence, while a rare card like me has 42, so actually it's ME that is the common, and that card that is the rare.

That card looks absolutely beautiful (yeah, that's my taste). Lodged offer of 0.40

[Holy Marsh]

I think a lot of Common cards get junked unless they're being collected for specific purpose. That is my theory at least.

[Switzo-Polish Republic]

Mein Gott..... it all make sure sense now!

[Koem Kab]

Rarity doesnt matter for a specific card for pulling, The higher the tier, the less of that tier there is, not the chances of pulling the card.

[Sadboiz]

I believe that the common cards themselves only have a few copies because it is probably to balance out the fact there are SO many nations with the category common, if you understand what I mean.

[No Worries]

the rarity of the card is based on the value we put on it, not on the category. Categories are value-free because there can be as many categories as you want and with names as you want. In other words, rare, common, legendary categories are irrelevant.

[Dytarma]

The Commons are so common they get trashed, so they become rare, while the Rares are so rare they are kept, so they become common, to simplify this theory.

[Candlewhisper Archive]

That card looks absolutely beautiful (yeah, that's my taste). Lodged offer of 0.40

My taste too, which is why I bought it. I'm largely just collecting the cards I like the look of.

[Candlewhisper Archive]

Another thought I had here is that you could drive up your average sale price by getting a rich nation and its puppet, then selling a copy of that card back and forth between you for a sum total of all the wealth they have.

This could create a false impression of value, albeit one that is pretty obvious, but with a little movement of cash between puppets you could, for example, make it so that a single card has an average trade value in the hundreds with no obvious paper trail.

Likewise, if you wanted to crash the value of, say, Testlandia, you could trade it back and forth between nations for a penny. Only the average sale price would fall, of course, not the highest price, but you could easily distort the market.

All in all, this really is a very, very clever April Fools.

[Anexora]

There are a few contributing factors behind this theory I would like to address :

•The Number of Common Nations
Many of the NationStates nations are in a majority only classified as Common. Yet only a few manage to rank up into Rares, Super-Rares, Epics, and Legendaries.
If we take this into account, the chance to find a copy of a Legendary card is way higher than finding a copy of a Common card simply due to how many Common cards are in the random rotation.

•Junking
A common card is literally the lowest possible price you can have. You cannot halve it and you can only double it by 100%.
Unless you find a collector-wanted Common card you are most likely either going to be hoping a nation wants to buy themselves for 0.02 Credits or right-out junk these cards as their value is an oxymoron of "Worthless Cash".

•The Rarity Stock Market
You can be quite sure a card of Testlandia will not end up in the junk yard. But it will end up sitting in several inventories because it has value and many owners demand a rise in the buyer offers.
Rare card remain because they sit in the market, not the trash.

TL:DR
There are too many Common cards ending up scrapped.
There are too many Common cards to find duplicated as much as higher rarities.

High-Tier cards are WAY LESS LIKELY to be Junked.
High-Tier cards are less frequent and thus more duplicated.
High-Tier cards are sitting in inventories waiting for market satisfaction.

[Hatsunia]

I think a lot of Common cards get junked unless they're being collected for specific purpose. That is my theory at least.

Still, even if they get junked, the finds are still counted. That "common" card the OP posted had 11 finds, while their "legendary" card had 44 finds.

[RunDown]

Basically, the chance to find a common is much higher than the chance of finding a legendary, BUT the chance of finding a specific legendary is higher than finding a specific common due to how many there are.

[His Excellence]

Good observations.
I feel it's worth noting that even penny sales should be considered a measure of desirability, because they're usually someone passing a card they want to hold onto from a puppet to their main nation, or in the scenario you outlined, a desperate attempt to artificially deflate value.

[Minoa]

I think a lot of Common cards get junked unless they're being collected for specific purpose. That is my theory at least.

Still, even if they get junked, the finds are still counted. That "common" card the OP posted had 11 finds, while their "legendary" card had 44 finds.

The notability of players plays a part in the categorisation, and in turn desirability: in any case, it is a parody of trading cards as I said on NSindex.

[Luna Amore]

Oh, I just thought it was a devious plot by the mods to crowd-source the search for rule-breaking mottos and flags.

Your explanation works too.

[USS Monitor]

Oh, I just thought it was a devious plot by the mods to crowd-source the search for rule-breaking mottos and flags.

That's an added bonus.

[The first Galactic Republic]

Individual cards appear in comparable numbers regardless of rarity, but there are far more of the lower classes of cards than there are of the highest classes of cards. So there are a comparable number of common x’s and legendary y’s out there if we look at just the individual nations, but there are far more common nations out there, so rarity still applies.

So the rarity applies to how common the class of card itself is. If you look at all the cards in existence, there are far more greys, greens, blues, etc.

[Candlewhisper Archive]

Sure, but the value is arbitrary, and actually the highest value is being assigned to more commonly occurring cards.

[The Great Hulk Hogan]

I think it's due to amount of the commons

[Ransium]

Oh, I just thought it was a devious plot by the mods to crowd-source the search for rule-breaking mottos and flags.

Your explanation works too.

But I’ve been too distracted by the cards to actually moderate, so trade-offs.