[krustyburger]

I would argue too that the scarcity of a collectible needs to be organic for whatever specific reason.

Taking the example of fine art, there is a clear reason that an original piece is unique. When artists release numbered prints, the buyers are aware that the numbering could have continued but the print run was stopped at an arbitrary point. For this reason, they are rarely anywhere near as valuable.

These days “chase” sports cards are often given extremely low print runs of just a few or even one copy. But in my view they will never have the collector appeal of older cards that are rare in large part because few of them happened to survive.

Creating artificial scarcity is an obvious way to manipulate collectors, and NFTs are completely built around that practice.

[EVdotIO]

Absolutely, there is a reason for the scarcity and people will put value on that. One carve out may be things like SUPREME, or some rare Air Force Ones, but that probably boils down the amazing marketing on their part, and may not stand up to the test of time. Clothing is kinda a weird one, as fashion is cyclical and the nature of collecting means you don't use it. The only things I think commanding huge prices are dead stock 1890's Levis or band tour shirts (which I would argue are not so much "fashion", as it more of the cultural relevance of the band). When adjusted for inflation, old high-end haute couture come out to be around what they cost back in the day and this can be said of pretty much all clothing, jeans being an exception.

[Noos]

Eh, it works with video games though. A few companies like Limited Run games release physical copies of digital games banking on artificial scarcity to drive sales, and that scarcity really drives up prices on the secondhand market. This is despite the fact that you can buy the game for $5 on a digital storefront. Something like Celeste for example.

There are other examples where you are right though. Comics in general with variant or the dreaded hologram colors were an attempt to do so, and it's kind of rare to see them valued today.