Rare & limited runs.

Scarcity on this shelf is manufactured on purpose and then written down. A run is opened, a quantity is made, the run is closed, and the tooling moves to the next line. Almost everything that happens to the price afterwards follows from that single decision — how many, and whether the maker ever went back for a second pass.

Which is why the reissue is the thing to watch, not the counterfeit. A fake is caught by stitch density, print registration and tag stock: it is a worse object trying to pass. A legitimate second run is caught by none of those, because it is the same object, made again — and for anyone who was buying the count rather than the piece, it quietly removes the reason they bought.

The swing tag is the run's certificate. It carries the maker's mark, the series, the edition line, the date code, the compliance block and the stock number, and it is the only part of a soft toy that states in print what the toy is. It is also the part designed to be cut off. That is why a tagged example and an untagged one are two listings, not one listing in two conditions.

Condition then splits in two, and the halves do not move together. The pile is what the room did: matting, pilling, the beige a south window leaves in white fibre. The tag is what the owner did: the crease, the biro, the missing cord. A conservator would call the first deterioration and the second loss, and would treat them as separate problems. So does the market.