Ok, you seem to be getting hung up on the term "rating system". Don't think of it that way. Think of it more like a bucketing system. Have you ever seen people's trade posts here where they will say "I'll trade any one of these for any one of these" or "I'll trade two of these for one of these", etc? It is like that. It has nothing to do with community percieved values or rankings. It is all the individual. So, I could to into someone's trades and quickly see how they "value" (not necessarily monitarily) a certain pin and then see if I have anything they want that they "value" the same.
I get what you're saying, anyway. I think of it like "Trading Tiers"...
For example, I have a lot of LE 100s on my Wants list. However, I don't want all of them on the same level. It has nothing to do with the PIN'S value...the pin could be a super nice, very desirable pin- I just don't like it as much as I do others on my Wants.
So if there were something like this:
1- Low
2- Medium
3- High
4- Very High
5- Highest
So I'd give my Holy Grails all "5", and on down the list, and you would do the same with your Trades, since no one knows better than you what you put into a pin, and what you would like for it. Like someone said, there are pins that are on my Wants that I couldn't even trade for- they're just there to remind me that I still would like them, or I just haven't gotten around to buying them. In this respect, there are a lot of LE 250s and 300s that would rank very low on my list, just because I'm not concerned about getting them.
It's all about how we *personally* evaluate our pins in our minds, and what we will and won't trade for a particularly pin. Realizing, of course, that we can all be flexible if a trade needs working on.
After all, no system is perfect, so we'd all have to remember that in a system like this. But it does make a great way to evaluate someone's stuff, and better prepares you to make a trade offer to them. Great crib notes.
