The Natural RC Discussion: 58th Edition

[30ranfordfan]

With some of the products, you can make an educated guess. If Upper Deck includes serial numbered cards, and says they fall "1 per XXXX" (box, case, 10 cases, whatever) you can make a pretty good estimate as to how many of any other "X per pack / box / case" there are.

It's really hard with some of those products though.

Let's use Upper Deck Series 1.

If I take this text (from the release details) at it's word...

2012-13 Upper Deck Series 1 Hockey has a couple of other case hits as well. Clear Cut Pride cards are made of acetate and look at the game's international appeal. Numbered to 100, the set celebrates players from Canada, the United States, Russia, Finland and Sweden. Collectors can also look for Clear Cut Honored Members (#/100), Clear Cut Foundation (#/25), and Clear Cut League Leaders (#/10).




Across all those sets, there are a total of 7350 Clear Cut cards. Does that mean there are 7350 cases?? I don't know the answer to that. If there were, you can figure out (approximatley) how many Young Guns were produced:

12 boxes per case = 88200 boxes. 6 YGs per box = 529,200 Young Guns printed. 50 cards in the set, means there are 10,584 of each card produced. Is this an exact number?? No, probably not, but I'll bet its close.

It would be interesting to figure out the print runs of the unnumbereds and take a count of how many RCs there are in each product and add them up to see what we're dealing with.

[odjickfan]

With some of the products, you can make an educated guess. If Upper Deck includes serial numbered cards, and says they fall "1 per XXXX" (box, case, 10 cases, whatever) you can make a pretty good estimate as to how many of any other "X per pack / box / case" there are.

It's really hard with some of those products though.

Let's use Upper Deck Series 1.

If I take this text (from the release details) at it's word...

2012-13 Upper Deck Series 1 Hockey has a couple of other case hits as well. Clear Cut Pride cards are made of acetate and look at the game's international appeal. Numbered to 100, the set celebrates players from Canada, the United States, Russia, Finland and Sweden. Collectors can also look for Clear Cut Honored Members (#/100), Clear Cut Foundation (#/25), and Clear Cut League Leaders (#/10).




Across all those sets, there are a total of 7350 Clear Cut cards. Does that mean there are 7350 cases?? I don't know the answer to that. If there were, you can figure out (approximatley) how many Young Guns were produced:

12 boxes per case = 88200 boxes. 6 YGs per box = 529,200 Young Guns printed. 50 cards in the set, means there are 10,584 of each card produced. Is this an exact number?? No, probably not, but I'll bet its close.

Don't forget retail and blasters

[30ranfordfan]

lol, yup. Totally forgot those.

My numbers would be approximatley how many of each YG exist in Hobby boxes. Since there are no serial numbered cards in the retail packs, it's impossible to know how many of each card were made. Safe to say though, that my number is a huge lowball.

Don't forget retail and blasters

[Gallinator]

Uhhh, I ran the numbers on UD1 when it first came out (again, hobby only) and got a different number for total Clear Cut cards (5070), which reduces the numbers significantly. I'd like to know if I am in error, so could you tell me how you came up with 7350?

Upper Deck 12/13 By the numbers
250	cards	set
100	Exclusives	per card
10	Excl. Spectrum	per card
27500	Total Excl	produced
48	packs	per Exclusive
1320000	packs	produced
55000	boxes	produced
CHECK
30	Clear Cut Found.	# to	25	750
6	CC Hon Mem.		100	600
12	CC Leaders		10	120
6	CC Pride Can Current		100	600
6	CC Pride Can Ret		100	600
6	CC Pride Russia		100	600
6	CC Pride Finland		100	600
6	CC Pride Sweden		100	600
6	CC Pride USA		100	600
				5070	cards	Acetate
				288	packs	per Acetate
				1460160	packs	produced
				60840	boxes	produced
Between	1320000	and	1460160	packs	produced
Implies		One in
	Young Guns	4	330000	to	365040	produced
	Set	50	6600		7301	each
	YG Canvas	48	27500		30420	produced
	Set	30	917		1014	each
	Canvas	6	220000		243360	produced
	Set	90	2444		2704	each
	Hockey Heroes	12	110000		121680	produced
	Set	12	9167		10140	each
	HH Header and Art	600	2200		2434	each produced
	MVP	6	220000		243360	produced
	Set	50	4400		4867	each
	Silver Skates	12	110000		121680	produced
	Set	30	3667		4056	each
	SS SP	120	11000		12168	produced
	Set	10	1100		1217	each
	SS Gold	320	4125		4563	produced
	Set	30	138		152	each
	SS Gold SP	2880	458		507	produced
	Set	10	46		51	each
	UD Game Jersey (92)
	Group A	20176	65		72	produced
	Set Estimate	1	65		72	each
	Group B	4112	321		355	produced
	Set Estimate	2	161		178	each
	Group C	1154	1144		1265	produced
	Set Estimate	4	286		316	each
	Group D	321	4112		4549	produced
	Set Estimate	4	1028		1137	each
	Group E	210	6286		6953	produced
	Set Estimate	1	6286		6953	each
	Group F	139	9496		10505	produced
	Set Estimate	4	2374		2626	each
	Group G	57	23158		25617	produced
	Set Estimate	16	1447		1601	each
	Group H	20	66000		73008	produced
	Set Estimate	60	1100		1217	each
	300 Win Club	864	1528		1690	produced
	Set	8	191		211	each
	Requisite Radiance	432	3056		3380	produced
	Set	60	51		56	each
	Signature Sensations (100)
	Group A	18468	71		79	produced
	Set Estimate	8	9		10	each
	Group B	2301	574		635	produced
	Set Estimate	15	38		42	each
	Group C	735	1796		1987	produced
	Set Estimate	27	67		74	each
	Group D	591	2234		2471	produced
	Set Estimate	50	45		49	each
	Overall 1:288	288	4583		5070	produced
			4675		5171

[30ranfordfan]

Ouch.

I can't tell you how I did it, read you message last night and thought I'd go look at the numbers again in the morning and see what I come up with (checked based on the checklist, not your numbers). Here's what I got:


12 Canada x100 1200
6 USA x100 600
6 Russia x100 600
6 Sweden x100 600
6 Finalnd x100 600
6 Honoured x100 600
30 Foundation x25 750
12 Leaders x 10 120

...... 5070 total.


Yeah, you've got the right total :) Not sure what I was doing. Messed up somewhere.

[Gallinator]

No worries - I just thought that maybe I screwed up the spreadsheet somewhere! Once you hit your forties...LOL

I try to "run the numbers" on anything I am interested in buying whenever possible, given that almost all card products are overproduced (much love to ITG for usually letting us know how much is produced or making it easy to figure out!). Young Guns almost always fall to the bottom of the urgency list since there are just so damn many of them for each player. Given the relatively small amount of people who actively collect (what's the latest estimate - 20,000?), supply will almost always outstrip demand, it seems.

[gfel2795]

Very cool to see the print runs on Young Guns. Amazing that a Young Gun card that should be numbered 6600-7301 (thanks Gallinator) books the same and has better sale value than the Artifacts rookies which are numbered to 699 or 899 (redemptions) or 999 (live) which come out of a more expensive product.

Why is Beckett calling the redeemed 2013-14 Artifacts rookies XRC "extended rookies" rather than true rookies? I understand the 2012-13 ones that came out of that year's product but the 2013-14s should be true right? Am I missing something important here or is Beckett up to its old tricks?


EDIT: I may have found the answer: Maybe because they came back numbered as "RED-201" rather than 201 making them not part of the regularly-numbered set? That begs the question: Why would UD/Artifacts producers do that? Doesn't that devalue their cards?

[cardscardscards]

EDIT: I may have found the answer: Maybe because they came back numbered as "RED-201" rather than 201 making them not part of the regularly-numbered set? That begs the question: Why would UD/Artifacts producers do that? Doesn't that devalue their cards?

The secondary market is the least of their concerns.

[30ranfordfan]

EDIT: I may have found the answer: Maybe because they came back numbered as "RED-201" rather than 201 making them not part of the regularly-numbered set? That begs the question: Why would UD/Artifacts producers do that? Doesn't that devalue their cards?

You're right, by changing the numbering (removing them from the "main set") it turned them into XRCs, rather than RCs. And it absolutely devalued those cards.

Why did they did they do it? They had no choice.

With the lockout at the start of the season, Upper Deck released Artifacts as they normally would. One RC redemption per box. Panini couldn't get the RCs into Certified (they hadn't played a game yet) but in anticipation of the season starting at some point, they put redemptions in instead.

When the lockout finally ended, the PA told them "No Rookie Cards this year" (other than the hold overs that were already in sets). That's why the dual RC class happened this year.

So UD and Panini were stuck. They created these redemption cards for players like Yakupov, but they were no longer allowed to make cards of Yakupov as part of that season. What do you do?

They likely could have filled all those redemptions with holdovers (yeah, the same ones that were in the main set). Just make them fancier, jazzed up versions. Hand out more Phillipe Cornettes instead of Nail Yakupovs.

They could have just scrapped the whole thing, and told people their redemptions would be replaced with something comparable

Or they could do what they did, and release those cards the following season - but change them up so they become XRC.... otherwise there would be no way to make RCs of them this year: If the 2012-13 Artifacts Yakupov is a Rookie Card, then nothing made for 2013-14 would be.

[Cunnuc]

I agree with gfel2795,

Products that were released before the lock-out had rookie cards. Cards of players expected to be rookies. Then the lock-out happened. Some of those same rookies were 'rookie cards' in 13-14 products as well. I do not know. I chase certain players or whole sets so I don't really concern myself with it.

Enough is enough though. In a hobby where only rookies, patches and autos sell we apparently have way too many 'rookies'. We are getting close to too many autos as well. Lord knows we have too many jerseys.

Early 1990s all over again but with a late 2010's twist.