[darkhorse9]

The usual explanation is production was lower since orders were down from stores that still had earlier series cards. Kids going back to school, football season coming yada, yada, yada

But thumbing through my binders one thing jumped out at me. It seems like all the superstar cards are in the lower series groups. They front loaded them to get kids interest right off the bat.

That could mean that kids already got the cards of the players they wanted so they had no interest in buying more packs just to get journeymen they never heard of, managers and rookies (Remember, few people cared about rookie cards back then). How often did a player - who was a superstar at the time - appear in a sixth or seventh series?

So it may very well have been a self-fulfilling prophesy by Topps to grab all the cash early and then move on from there.