Who has seen the famous Kirk McLean Pro Set Autos? WANTED

[billcollector]

Yes that is the card. Also I am noticing that the 'graph looks it age on the in-pack versions.

[billcollector]

Cash offer if anybody has these!

[Savard18]

Wow Bill, you're still chasing that McLean auto, eh? lol, you've been looking for that auto for a looong time man, heck ever since I joined the SCF community, 4 years ago almost?

Well my friend, I hope you find it soon.

Was it a promo of some kind or was it inserted into packs? because if it was inserted in packs you may just want to buy a case, cross your fingers and hope, lol... I'm sure you could get a 20-box case for less than $150, because that Pro-Set is essentially junk wax... I mean you could probably pull the stars and make at least 50 bucks back off as a huge "lot of score stars" on ebay and then use the commons for fireplace kindling, lol... Hey I did the math and junk wax pound for pound is cheaper than those "fire-starter bricks"...

Anyway I hope you find that auto soon Bill, so good luck!

- Nick

[billcollector]

Thanks Nick,

Anybody out there good at math? Help me figure this out.
This card has a print run of 500. There are 36 packs per box. I would estimate, there would have been about 100,000 set of
Pro Set product produced. It is roughly a 600 card set, to make the math easy.

What are the odds of pulling this card from a 20 box case ?

[30ranfordfan]

Thanks Nick,

Anybody out there good at math? Help me figure this out.
This card has a print run of 500. There are 36 packs per box. I would estimate, there would have been about 100,000 set of
Pro Set product produced. It is roughly a 600 card set, to make the math easy.

What are the odds of pulling this card from a 20 box case ?

This is the 92-93, or the 91-92 ? (I still don't believe the 91-92 exists, and I'm not sure the 92-93 was ever actually in packs).

I'll humor you though.... and I do enjoy talking about these old cards.

You said 600 cards, so I assume you mean the 91-92. Also remember that this set was a Series 1/2 - so let's not round off (it really doesn't make the math much easier). There were 345 cards in Series 1, and 270 cards in Series 2, for a total of 615.

I think the Mclean was supposedly in Series 2, so let's just go with that.

Assume there was 100k sets of 270 cards made. That means there was a total production of 27,000,000 cards.

You buy a box of 36 packs. There were 15 cards per pack. That's 540 cards per box, and 10,800 cards per 20-box case. With a total print run of 27,000,000: There would be 2,500 total cases. That number sounds low to me, but maybe it's right?

This also doesn't factor in the cc inserts, but I have no idea what the ratio on those would have been, so it's hard to account for them. Let's just pretend like a McLean, or a cc card, would have been a "bonus" card in its pack. That keeps everything simple.

If this is correct... if McLean was really inserted in to Series 2 boxes, there was really 500 copies, and there was really 100k sets produced: You should see a McLean fall every 5 cases.

Even if the production run was 4x that, you'd still see one every 20 cases. This is why I have a hard time believing they exist, because even at 1-per-20 cases, someone should be able to show us a copy of one, and one of us old dudes in their 40s would be able to say "I pulled one".

If the card was inserted into Series 1, with 345 in the set, that would mean a total print run around 34.5 million cards. The numbers don't work out as evenly as 270 did... but there would be approximately 3,194.44 cases (assuming 100k sets were printed). I'll just round that up and say 3,200 cases.

If there were 500 copies randomly inserted into 3200 cases: That would mean 1 fell every 6.4 cases.... or 5 of them every 32 cases (if you want to use whole numbers).

I think these boxes can be had for $5-$10 (or so). I know where you're going with this. If you can get a sealed 20 box case for $100, that's probably an okay value. If you bought 5 of them... odds would dictate that you'd pull one. Best of luck if you decided that... and I would be thrilled to come on here and say "man, I'm dumb. I never should have doubted that card's existence" - but I'm guessing if you crack 20, 20 box cases, you still won't find one.

[billcollector]

Ok that is a lot of info to go over. But it was exactly what I wanted and I do find this all interesting.

First let's get the math as good as we can get it. I am pretty sure the McLean's were only Series One US. (you did the math with Series Two).
The Roy autos are in the French only.

It would be strange for the same auto to be issued in both Series One and Two. That really doesn't make sense.
So let's go with Series One of 345 cards, and a print run of 500 on the McLean.

Now the Roy card should be much easier to pull. Roy signed 1,000 cards for Series One and 1,000 cards for Series Two. These are French exclusive.
Considering there are 2x as many Roy autos than McLean, and French boxes are usually less produced than US, the Roy card should be a much easier pull.

Also, this is trivial, but I believe the way they did it, was if they produced 100,000 McLean base cards, they took 500 of those cards and they were signed. So technically he would have
500 auto cards and 99,500 base cards.

Now with all that aside, the key to this is HOW MANY SETS WOULD PRO SET HAVE MADE?

Information on print runs from the early 90s is hard to come by. When I said 100,000, that is just a wild guess. That seems like a lot, but as Ranford Fan said, once you break down how many cases that is, it doesn't seem like a lot.

Some comparisons that are factual. 94 Leaf Limited produced 60k boxes. That's boxes, not cases.
92 Bowman produced 32k boxes.

Now, to use your example for Series Two (working with the 100k number of sets produced) that would put Pro Set Series Two at 50k boxes produced. This is LESS than 94 Leaf Limited.

Based on the fact that the worst period for hockey card over-production probably reached its peak in and around 1991, and how many boxes of this product have been opened over the years and STILL remain available, I'm going to say the 100k number is way too low.

In fact, I'm thinking they may have made as many as 500k sets of 91 Pro Set.

So if you have the card at a pull rate of about 1:6 cases that means my chances of pulling this card from one case is about 16%. Pretty low.

And that is if 100k sets were produced. I'm thinking it is 4-5 times that number which REDUCES those chances by that same multiplier, correct?
So are we talking optimistically, about a 5% chance of pulling the McLean auto from one case?

Wow.

Now these cases are selling currently for about $150. There are not any sold on ebay mind you, but those are the prices the dealers have set it at.

So $150 times how ever many cases it takes to pull this card.

In summary I would say it would be much more cost effective to wait for the card to hit and try and bid on it. As rare as the card is, the Roy has been spotted with a sale price of around $100 and I can't see the McLean going for even that much.

But this opens up an interesting side debate.

Just how many of some of these late 80s and early 90s sets (during the sports card boon) were actually produced? I once heard somewhere (I don't know how legit it is) that Topps was producing a million of their baseball sets around this time.
Well, based on all of the numbers laid out above, and the fact that baseball was the number one sport for cards, that one million number seems feasible.

(And I still could never complete those 792 cards sets!!! LOL)

[costanza]

I thought this was going to be it in the background of this youtube video. Alas, I don't think it is.

[billcollector]

I wish it were!!

That is a 95 Be A Player auto. Nice card but pretty common.

Keep looking!!

[Savard18]

I think the problem is the scarcity + the fact it's only a Pro Set Kirk McLean that looks like someone just got Kirk McLean to sign a random Pro Set card in-person after a game or something.

How many are there? 500

Lets assume after 27 years that perhaps 350 have been pulled out of packs..... I would be willing to bet that there are at least 75-100 of them sitting in dealer/collector 2 cards for $5 dollar bin right now and 100 that collectors have, but totally forgot about, or have no idea that it's a 1 in 8 case hit.... I mean it's a pretty bland looking card, nothing "pops" out that makes it appear to be a significant card... Lets not forget that autos are common these days, so your typical collector that comes across one has absolutely no idea that it's a scarce autograph.... I mean if I saw it before I read this thread years ago - I would have no interest, I mean maybe if it was in a dollar bin or something I would take a closer look at it - but that's only because I'm a former goalie that collects goalies, lol.... Besides, I already have a 1992-93 McLean IP auto somewhere around here, lol - it's obviously not the insert of course.

So yea, IMO this is just a case of a 27-year-old card that comes from an era of mass production, and I presume many collectors would look at the card and not give it a second glance and assume it's just another auto on "junk wax"...

I can say this much tho - the card does indeed exist..

IMO, Pro Set could have done a WAY better job on that card to make it "pop out" and look a bit more significant - like make the name and the logo gold or something (that was big in the early 90's), that or made the card glossy like they did with Platinum or even had McLean hand number each card...

Does anyone even know what it books for? it can't be that much, it's Pro Set and it's Kirk McLean... I'm guessing $20 high book..

Anyway, I find this thread fascinating because somewhere out there is some collector that has one sitting in a box of junk from the early 90's, probably unaware he has a card that is somewhat in demand, lol... Well I'm sure we all have a few of those cards in our collections that someone has been looking for forever, but can't seem to find it anywhere because few actually care about it and it's so obscure..

[Savard18]

This thread actually reminds me of that old Mike Roe show on the History Channel before they got obsessed with aliens and 2012 - called "History's Lost and Found" lol...

I can't wait until Bill finds his infamous 1993-94 Kirk McLean auto, lol.... I bet he will be ecstatic and have a smile on his face for a month, people will think he got a bad botox injection lol....

What other scare/rare or obscure goalies are you looking for @billcollector ? - maybe I can help you with something else on your list because I do have a lot of goalie cards you don't exactly see everyday on ebay or at the LCS..... Oh and if it matters I check ebay now for that Pro Set Kirk McLean auto when I go browsing for deals - and if I find it I will be sure to send you the link, that or use the BIN feature and trade it to you for cost.