How do store rarities work?

[fluffing]

I love the new store pet set so much!! I'm unsure of whether they'll be VR or rare because I'm assuming a lot of people will buy them. I've seen past store sets that imo wouldn't be that high demand but they're rare, so I'm a little confused on how rarities work. I'm thinking of buying a few sets but I can't justify spending 20C$ per rare pet, even if they are stores. So I'm hoping someone can clear this up for me since I'm still a noob player and am not sure on how store rarities work. If it is demand based and based on how many people own the pets, I'm confused on why cooler sets (obviously it's subjective but I'd say I have a pretty good eye for what most people like) are VR whilst there's sets that personally I don't think are that great which are rare, so it seems a little backwards to me. But if anyone knows the answer please let me know!

[Omiyage]

To my understanding rarities are based on how many people own that pet. If people own many of one pet it is less rare. So yes, the store pets that get adopted more will be less rare.

But most users can't afford the store pets in the first place. Many also leave after a while, their accounts go dormant and no longer count towards the rarities. That's also why the rarities sometimes fluctuate when events happen as older, or inactive, players return for a while and rarities the next month change a bit.

[Kirin Koi]

The thing about stores is that they aren't rereleased like most rares, so they will only ever gain value. Even the most common stores will be worth significantly more in a few years, and the oldest stores are near impossible to attain. Whereas regular rares are rereleased every year and will decrease in value slightly and maintain a lower value over time.

[Celozon]

I've move this to the help board as it better belongs here ^^

To clarify a bit, rarities are dependent on how many people own a pet, so the more they are adopted the lower the rarity. That said, store pets are a bit different from normal pets. There are other factors too though, store pet prices have been increased in the last few years (starting around mid '22) which is likely causing less to be bought as a whole (the last rare set is from '22, all of '23 was very rare, suggesting that people are indeed buying less). The amount of the pets in the set may also have an impact, a set of 4 costs less than a set of 5, so less may be bought if its a larger set if some users can't afford the larger set or people who buy multiples can't afford to buy as many duplicate sets.

Given that this the largest set of store pet's we've ever gotten, with the highest price for the full set that I can recall, it may very well end up very rare just due to that. It does seem to be rather popular though so only time will tell. I personally though wouldn't worry that much about the rarity they end up being, from my experience store pets tend to sell for the same amount regardless of rarity. Any lower rarity is typically offset by increased demand because it was a popular set. Store pet sets tend to work a bit different from regular monthly pets since the rarity is driven purely by how many people are willing and able to buy them rather than a pre-set likelihood like monthly adopts.

I also wanted to add that pets do indeed increase in rarity over time, though this process takes years and years so I wouldn't rely on it in any way. Store pets are not ever re-released so they will never go down in rarity. Regular rares are re-released and may temporarily go down in rarity after Dec 18th, but the overall trend is always to increase in rarity, even for pets that get re-released. This is why all the pets from 2008-2009 are so rare now, those that were common or uncommon have increased in rarity over the years to rares and very rares as older players and accounts go inactive and there are less of those pets on active accounts to go around.