포토카드 희소도는 어떻게 정해지나
포토카드의 희소도는 발행량과 획득 난이도로 결정됩니다. 앨범에 기본으로 들어가는 카드보다 유통사 예약특전이, 그보다 럭키드로우·팬사인회 응모 특전이 훨씬 적게 풀립니다. 실무적으로는 2차 시장에 매물이 얼마나 자주 나오는지로 판단하는 것이 가장 정확합니다.
What actually makes a photocard rare
1. Print run — the biggest factor
How many enter circulation differs enormously by benefit type.
- Album inclusions — everyone who bought the album. The most plentiful.
- Pre-order benefits (POB) — every pre-order buyer, split by retailer.
- Lucky draw — winners only. Drops off sharply.
- Fansign entry cards — the fewest of all.
2. Retailer — especially from abroad
Cards from domestic-only Korean stores are hard for overseas fans to buy directly, so far fewer reach the international resale market. A card that is ordinary in Korea can be scarce everywhere else. See the retailer guide.
3. Member popularity
Popular members command higher prices, but their cards also surface more often. Expensive and hard-to-get are not the same thing. It is often a less-requested member's card that blocks a set, precisely because nobody bothers listing it.
4. Time
Print runs never grow. Cards get damaged and lost, and collectors sit on what they have. So older albums generally get harder to complete.
★ Why we don't rate rarity ourselves
We can measure supply — how many are listed right now. We cannot measure demand. And zero listings has two opposite causes:
- Everyone wants it and nobody will sell it → a grail
- Nobody wants it, so nobody bothers listing it → the opposite of a grail
A listing count cannot tell those apart. Labelling a card nobody wants a “grail” would be worse than saying nothing, so every card starts at Common and only moves when collectors say otherwise.
| Tier | Set by |
|---|---|
| Common | Default for every card |
| Rare | Collector evaluation |
| Very Rare | Collector evaluation |
| Grail | Collector evaluation |
| Unrated | Not observed long enough to say anything |
Alongside the tier we always show the plain supply fact — “3 listed now”, “none listed for 90d”. That part we measured. The tier is what collectors think.
Zero listings is still information
“No price data” and “none listed for 90 days” are very different statements. The second one tells you that if you see one, you probably shouldn't wait — regardless of what tier it carries.
That is why the alert on each card follows supply rather than tier. If nothing is listed, an alert is useful whether or not the card is famous.
⚠️ When we withhold judgement entirely
A card we only started watching shows “Unrated”. Not observed and not available are different things, so below 14 days of observation we say nothing at all.
Below 3 samples we mark the data as thin, and every price carries its sample size and age. A single listing is never shown as a market price.
The full rule set is published in Methodology.
Limits
- Based on eBay and other international marketplaces. Korean domestic supply is not counted.
- A card traded heavily in Korea can look scarcer here than it is.
- That said, if you are buying from outside Korea, “hard to get from here” is still the number that matters to you.