As I've said before on this blog, the most common questions we get are questions about "ests". What is the toughest trick, who is the best player, what was the longest throw and catch, etc. I've also mentioned that these questions rarely have easy answers.
A shining example of this is a question I hear constantly: "What is the rarest Myachi?"
There is an actual answer to this question and it's a pretty simple one until you start getting into the details and then it becomes surprisingly complicated.
The rarest Myachi is the first Myachi ever made, the Guatemalan Wallet.
Sounds simple enough, right? If I left it at that this would be a pretty short and sweet blog (which would be good; I'm tired), but it would be woefully incomplete.
See, the thing is that there's no guarantee that the Guatemalan Wallet still even exists. Myachi Man sold it a decade ago and nobody's sure where it is, who has it or indeed if anyone at all has it. It's entirely possible that it was munched by a dog or dropped in a gutter at some point and has since been reclaimed by the world.
Myachi Man swears he would recognize it on sight but there's no promise that it will ever resurface. It certainly hasn't in the last 10 years.
When people hear this story, their typical reaction is a shocked expression followed shortly by "why would he sell it?"
To understand that you have to keep in mind that this was long before the Myachi movement had started to really coalesce. Myachi Man had no idea what would become of the idea and the fact that somebody was willing to pay $5 for one was probably a validation that the business concept was solid.
At that point, it was more important to sell the sack than it was to have the first one.
Now, fast forward a dozen years and that thing is essentially priceless. We've seen single Myachis sell for over $400 on ebay and there are rumors of private sales in the four figure range so it's hard to imagine what the Guatemalan Wallet would net.
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There is a big question still unanswered, though. If the Guatemalan Wallet may well not exist, it can't exactly be the rarest Myachi, can it? So the next question is obviously what the rarest Myachi is if you take the Guatemalan Wallet out of the equation.
Unfortunately the answer here is not so cut and dry. There are two factors that effect a Myachis rareness. The first is how many were made and the second is how long ago they were made.
There are a number of prototype Myachis that were made in extremely small numbers. For some as few as 3 were ever made and in several of those examples only one remains. That means that there are several one of a kind Myachis that could all realistically compete for the title of rarest. After all, everything that is one of a kind is just as rare as anything else that is one of a kind.
But for the purposes of Trade Value you also have to consider the age of the sack. A one of a kind prototype that was made yesterday can't really be considered equivalent to the same sack made in 2001. If you go by this standard the rarest sack is currently believed to be the Silver Surfer.
I say "currently believed to be" because there's still a possibility that an older prototype will resurface and I will have to amend this entry.
An interesting case can also be made that the "Blue/Red Speckle" is the rarest Myachi in that there are slightly fewer than 1 known to be in existence.
I guess that deserves some explanation. There is one Blue/Red Speckle in Kid Myach's collection but it burst long ago and lost all its secret sauce. Thus this husk is the only known example of the Blue/Red Speckle. Like the Guatemalan Wallet this all but disqualifies it in the race to be the rarest.
I suppose that its the curse of a Myachi Master that the questions you hear most often never have an easy answer. I'm reminded of that anytime some stranger strikes up a conversation with, "So what do you do for a living?"
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