What does "Low Production" mean to you?

Supply and demand. If you could sell 1 million items then 10 thousand is rare, if you can only sell maybe a thousand then 50 would be rare. You can play with the number of course but that is the way I look at it.

Price is being artificially inflated?

For me, low numbers are anything made in qualtities less than 150 units.

I believe my 3rd Rail/GGD Columbian set was maybe 50 sets of 3R cars?

Reportly, the 3rd Rail/GGD Train of Tomorrow is limited to only 70 sets.

When, you get into numbers this low, you seldom see the set come up for sale on the secondary market.

Interestly, one of my Weaver brass engines was made I think in quantities of 150 or so, and occassionally (every couple of months) I see one for sale on ebay.

Jim

Not sure I would agree with this one, only because 10,000 is a lot... period. Hardly a rare item.

Thanks for your input.

Low production doesn't necessarily equate to rarity.  It's only rare when production is designed that way such as the Natty Boh car or when a mistake in production created a few rarities.

Low volumes means less demand, less product.

Just because something is rare does not mean that it has enhanced value. On the other hand, part of supply and demand equation has to balance with the bottom line, and the whole thing depends on disposable income in this case. Hobbyists to some extent have backed themselves into a corner by demanding more than requires paying more... while the numbers who have that level of disposable income do not warrant the risk of higher production so you have "we will build them only as needed." It becomes a Catch 22. Maybe a Catch 23. 

If the forum here is any indication or other publications for that matter, the traditional postwar O gauge has taken a page a couple of decades ago from HO where "realism" or "scale" in addition to command systems and their additional costs is the latest buzz word, and any modicum of common sense applied to this issue if compounded by the aging demographics as well as the face to face exposure lessened by the disappearing local hobby shop. All of this combined is what it is. One hand washes the other.

I have been in the hobby long enough to recall the once popular activity of buying 'detail parts and there were a lot of suppliers. The idea was to make an engine more realistic by scratch building and the same applied to structures. Everyone seems to want everything out of the box which is more expensive. The impact of all this is lower volumes.

This post is obviously aimed at the "O" gauge train market. With that in mind, I would say that 500 or less is a fair amount. If you put it like this, that's only 10 units per state. (D.C. doesn't get any) The product, price, demographics of targeted audience are just some of the variants to determine amount. 

One less than the total number of people wanting one.

One of my favorite low production items was when Weaver ran the brass 0-6-0's. they had 24 road names. Pittsburgh WVA only 8 pieces. Talk about BTO!!

rat

I would say that in my opinion things like the McCoy Great Northern freight set (25 or so sets made); McCoy Canadian TTOS freight sets (100-130 made); or the Williams 1979 TCA Silver Anniversary set (+- 200 sets made); some of the Richart sets of under 200 made: these kind of numbers sound to me like "low production".  Especially since these date to about 30-40 years ago, and numbers extant have probably dwindled some.

Once you get up to 1000, given how relatively small the hobby as a whole is, I think you have to find another name for them; they don't flood the market surely, but there are enough out there that they are hardly scarce.

I would tend to equate the word "scarce" with the "low production" numbers.  I like to reserve "rare" for steaks, or things that you have enough fingers to count.  More "rare" than that are the one-offs or something that maybe two or three were made of; these I would feel comfortable calling "unique" or nearly so.

But I realize this is very arbitrary, and I'd respect any one else's approximation as well... as long as we don't descend to the eBay level of calling everything that isn't Lionel "rare".

Ives O Gauge Herald Boxcars are a case in point.  It's quite hard to find them all, and may take years of searching.  The temptation is to call the one you can't find rare or scarce, but the fact is they were made by the thousands, even tens of thousands.  There has surely been some attrition over the years, but one has to presume they are out there.  One seller has taken to calling these "tough" cars, as in "tough to find", to avoid the "S" or "R" words.

Arno, on your web site you make a distinction between "manufacturers" and "craftsmen".  Seems to me that by definition, anything that can be called "low production" is still a production run, and is the province of manufacturers - McCoy, CMT, Forney, Williams...  The "craftsmen" are basically handmaking things, like Jim Cohen or Joe Mania, and their output IMO isn't going to reach "low production" levels.