Using RARE Is Silly

I was looking at a completed auction for a complete set of the matte yellow Nancy Drew picture cover books — in fact the auction mentioned in a recent post. The sellers like to describe these sets as RARE. Check out this screen capture of what I saw right above the completed listing: Click on it to see a larger version. Four complete matte sets of #1-56 are pictured, and I do see RARE as a descriptor. Wow, four sets available all at once, and they are RARE? So if only two sets were available I bet they would be super RARE. If only one were available, it would be extremely super RARE.

How about using "hard to find" instead? You know — "HTF." "HTF" uses fewer characters, and at least it is not exactly a lie. It can take some time to compile a complete set of Nancy Drew books but the sets are definitely not RARE. If the sets were RARE, then only a few of us would have complete sets. Oh, I know — the buyers love seeing RARE, but the sets will sell with or without that word. Trust me on this. I have sold complete sets for $150 to $450 in the past and never described them as RARE.

By the way, it is not as hard to get a complete set of the matte yellow Nancy Drew books as sellers would have you think. When I used to sell complete sets, I compiled them the same way that these other sellers do. All you have to do is buy a few of the incomplete lots that sell for relatively low prices. The aim is to buy the books for no more than around $2.00 each, so a seller can buy a set of 50 of the books for around $100.00 and then get the last few missing titles from another purchase. Voila! The seller then has a complete set of Nancy Drew books which can then be sold for $250.00 to $500.00. This is why the same sellers who offer the RARE complete sets also frequently offer partial sets for lower prices. They have to get rid of all of the extras that they purchase.