Production Estimates / Print Run Archive

[JUrsaner]

Hoping to also move more into the great unknown with estimates of the base years everyone knows/loves.

So going to start adding some loose estimates starting from 1975 Topps. Read somewhere that Sy Berger had remarked in a book/interview (source?) that Topps printed 500m cards in 1975. Might have been figurative... but also seems possible. Would be ~750k/card. Need to assume a certain % was "consumed" by the hobby - used, creased, lost, thrown away... to get to current stockpile

Any thoughts/input on starting to estimate the vintage/junk wax base sets for Topps - much appreciated.
Just threw in 750k/card for modern vintage and 1m/card for junk wax for right now

I'd also love to try to back into production #s for some of the "common" insert sets from the 90s

[West]

I would like to address the years 1989 Upper Deck base and 1990 Topps base. I have done some research into the printing of 1990 Topps. Also, Pete Williams' "Card Sharks" gave readers an unprecedented look behind the scenes of the production of 1989 Upper Deck. According to the book, the initial release of 1989 Upper Deck was for around 125,000 cases. That's 1.4 billion cards. That's around 2 million of each card in the 700 card first series. Now we know they couldn't keep up with demand and continued printing. For argument's sake, let's say they doubled the initial print run and made 4 million of each card (2.8 billion total cards printed). One source inside the industry claimed that 81 billion trading cards were printed by the late '80s and early 90's.

Maybe someone else can estimate the market share of each sport in 1990. But say Topps printed 1/4 of the 81 billion trading cards printed. That's 20 billion trading cards in 1990. Let's then say that the breakdown was 40% baseball cards, 25% football and 25% hockey and 10% non-sports. That's 8 billion baseball cards. Say Topps base was 80% of that. 6.6 billion cards of a 792 card set would be a print run of 8.3 million of each card. Personally I feel that is a conservative estimate and wouldn't be surprised if the print run of each base card of 1990 Topps baseball was 15 million.

Looking at the current unopened market, it does appear to me that 1990 Topps is at least 2-3 times more plentiful than 1989 Upper Deck.

[JUrsaner]

@West - That is what I'm talking about! Love that post - gives a lot to think about for estimates

Was that claim of 80b+ trading cards supposedly an annual figure?

[nat]

Why not call the companies? They might just tell you.

[West]

Originally Posted by nat

Why not call the companies? They might just tell you.

Very few, if any employees remain from the pre-1995 era. Some undoubtedly have passed away. I've reached out to several folks who were involved with the industry. I was only able to get one person to respond.

This is the most helpful article I've found in which a former employee has gone on the record about information that was not publicly available at the time.

https://www.sportscollectorsdaily.co...hn-tassoni-jr/

I'm not aware of any other articles that go behind the scenes of production, besides a Topps Magazine piece from 1991 that was more of a publicity piece. I shared that article in a different thread.

[homerunderby]

Take this info for what its worth but its from some research I did awhile back.

1975 Topps: 380,000 sets (Source: Beckett 3 estimate published 1981)
1979 Topps: 315,000 sets (Source: Beckett 3 estimate published 1981)
1991 Donruss: 5mm sets (Estimate from extrapolating from print run of Elite, average number of cases for the hit)
1992 Donruss: 5mm sets (see above)

[JUrsaner]

Originally Posted by homerunderby

Take this info for what its worth but its from some research I did awhile back.

1975 Topps: 380,000 sets (Source: Beckett 3 estimate published 1981)
1979 Topps: 315,000 sets (Source: Beckett 3 estimate published 1981)
1991 Donruss: 5mm sets (Estimate from extrapolating from print run of Elite, average number of cases for the hit)
1992 Donruss: 5mm sets (see above)

Hadn't seen this comment, but tried to incorporate into ranges. I'd calculated closer to 2m sets for 1992 Donruss extrapolated from the Elite print run - although have read 1992 production was reduced from prior years

The 2 million estimate is essentially equivalent to 1:1.5x case odds for Elite (excl. legend/signature series)
1 case = 20 boxes
1 box = 36 packs
1 pack = 15 cards

1 case = 20 boxes = 720 packs = 10,800 cards
1 Elite = 1.5x case odds = 16,200
10x Player Elite Set /10,000 = 100,000 Elite Cards = ~1.6b cards
792-card set (including Series 2 "bonus cards") = /2,000,000+ per card

[bnorth]

Originally Posted by West

Very few, if any employees remain from the pre-1995 era. Some undoubtedly have passed away. I've reached out to several folks who were involved with the industry. I was only able to get one person to respond.

This is the most helpful article I've found in which a former employee has gone on the record about information that was not publicly available at the time.

https://www.sportscollectorsdaily.co...hn-tassoni-jr/

I'm not aware of any other articles that go behind the scenes of production, besides a Topps Magazine piece from 1991 that was more of a publicity piece. I shared that article in a different thread.

I have several friends and a few relatives that worked for Score for years. They all cared about cards as much as most of us care about playing with Barbie dolls.

Even when working there they knew little to nothing about anything but the crappy job they done. Now about the only thing most remember is Score gave them those "damn worthless" cards instead of bonuses for Christmas(holidays).

[seanofjapan]

If I recall correctly, Donruss in its advertising for the 1992 set claimed that it was scaling back production to 1985 levels, so I am pretty sure there is less 1992 Donruss out there than there was for the years immediately preceding it.

[West]

Originally Posted by JUrsaner

@West - That is what I'm talking about! Love that post - gives a lot to think about for estimates

Was that claim of 80b+ trading cards supposedly an annual figure?

It was an annual figure. I've seen it reported in several places, here is one link:

https://slate.com/culture/2010/03/th...rd-bubble.html

"Unfortunately for investors, each one of those cards was being printed in astronomical numbers. The card companies were shrewd enough never to disclose how many cards they were actually producing, but even conservative estimates put the number well into the billions. One trade magazine estimated the tally at 81 billion trading cards per year in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, or more than 300 cards for every American annually. "

I'm not sure what trade magazine the original estimate came from. Could we posit that Topps produced as much as 40% of that 81 billion? I know there was a ton of Fleer, Donruss and Score out there, but Topps had been the industry leader for decades and Upper Deck was just getting on its feet. Some kind of market share data (or an annual report, as Steve B mentioned) from that era would get a better estimate.

Since Topps became publicly traded I was able to download annual reports from as far back as 1995. But the junk wax era reports are not available as Topps was privately held at that time and employees and subcontractors all had strict non-disclosure stipulations in their contracts.

[steve B]

Originally Posted by JUrsaner

I'd also love to try to back into production #s for some of the "common" insert sets from the 90s

If a set has any numbered inserts, and stated odds, you can figure out approximate numbers for everything else.

It does get complicated once the companies started doing different odds for different products and different inserts for different packaging/retail exclusives, but a rough figure is possible.

Other years it may be possible to get a very approximate figure by figuring out what each card wholesaled for and if the annual report includes a breakdown of how much in sales was Baseball cards. But only a very rough estimate, since the per card price was very different between wax/cellos/racks/vending.