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The Rarity Scale on this Website

As I add details, pics etc to my list I'm going to attempt to assign everything a rarity mark out of ten. That'll be fun.

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It's hard to judge rarity for QL items, as most (apart from perhaps the UK computers themselves and the Psion software that they all came with!) are not that easy to find. Some things appear for sale from time to time, some more often than others. Items that appear for sale more regularly were probably items that sold in higher volumes, and there are also other factors, e.g. software/games that were good or useful are less likely to have been lost or discarded over the years and should, theoretically, also show up for sale more often.

My rarity scale from 1 to 10 attempts to quantify the amount of times (roughly!) that I remember seeing a particular item for sale and/or how easy it was for me to obtain. It's purely subjective though and it doesn't always have any bearing on the value of an item, as QL collectors are few and far between - and less people looking for something will mean that sometimes they sell for a low value, despite being rare. Other factors that affect value are of course, what it is - games tend to sell for more, especially decent ones or well-known ones, whereas obscure utilities that allow you to print text sideways (or whatever) don't really have the draw and despite being rare - well there is simply less demand! The same applies to hardware - very useful things like e.g. an original Gold Card, are likely to sell for more than a Floppy drive interface with no extra RAM, even if the Floppy Interface is very rare. And of course the state of repair or the functionality (and whether an item has been tested before being offered for sale) also plays a role when it comes to value.

Here is the scale from 1 to 10, with some examples along the way:

1 - Very common items that are generally always available for sale somewhere (e.g. the common UK QL computer and the Psion software packs).

2 - Somewhat common items that appear for sale very often (e.g. Psion Chess and the QL-Utilities and QL-Games cartridge).

3 - Common items (e.g. Cartridge Doctor, that one seems to appear frequently - it was a very useful thing!)

4 - Somewhat Scarce items (e.g. Knight Flight, Steve Davis Snooker and quite a lot of QL software)

5 - Scarce items (e.g. original Trump cards, a lot of software)

6 - Very Scarce items - (e.g. the QEPIII Eprom programmer, the ICL OPD/Merlin Tonto, Cuthbert in Space plus a lot of software/games)

7 - Rare items (e.g. an original Gold Card, many foreign QL computer versions and also a lot of software/games)

8 - Very Rare items (e.g. original Super Gold Cards, Aquanaut 471, Vroom)

9 - Extremely Rare items (e.g. War in the East, the SPEM digitiser)

10 - Rocking Horse Poo items (e.g. CST THOR computers, Aurora boards, any Q40/Q60, the games Fleet Tactical Command, The Dark Side of the Moon and Super Croupier)

If you think any of those examples are wildly wrong, let me know.

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