I haven't heard of any weapon variant. But I am going to place my bets that they are noting the cavity number on the weapon. It seems silly to me when people sell Doc on eBay as a weapon variant when in all years past, the Joe community has never regarded a cavity number as a variation. I spent a little time trying to keep track of those and it is pretty much a wild goose chase. You'll never track them all. Many figures have multiple cavity numbers internally. Do you really want to tear every figure apart (keep in mind ones that don't just come apart like Zartan or Armor Tech) to see what combination of cavity numbers are there inside? Then to count every combination of cavity numbers as a different variant of a figure is a permutation I'd rather not even see.

Cavity numbers can be noteworthy. What if one cavity differs significantly from another? But when all else is equal, counting them seems to be....excessive?

I agree. I think the individuals assigning value are really reaching here, in that they've found something (else) they can use to differentiate one figure from another, and are playing on that to arbitrarily assign values to that item.

Cavity-to-cavity, you shouldn't have significant enough variation in a part to warrant an item being called a variant. The whole point of cavity identification is to allow quality control to track a problem with a part if a problem shows up (i.e., if a tool breaks and misforms the part, etc.). The only way I can see one cavity number being truly rare would be if that cavity had a problem at some point and was taken out of commission during the product run, making its ID number less common than others. But it could take eons for collectors to figure that out, looking at all the end-product on the shelves.

And while they profit-minded "collectors" are driving themselves mad and blind looking for cavity numbers on accessories to determine the value of their "investment", I'll be happily playing with my liberated figures.

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