How many total?

[KingKuba]

That estimate is horribly inflated on McDavid YGs. Even if my calculations are way off (I have it at 20k-25k), the high end of the McDavid year would be in the 30k-40k YGs. PSA has graded just over 2000 as 10s which would be around 10% which seems in line with a lower number, too. At 60k, only 3% are PSA 10s and only 5% have been graded - both very low for an important, modern card.

That's because they all got sent to BGS at the time because PSA was not the "it" place to send YG's.
BGS has almost 10k of them graded...

If you add PSA plus BGS that's already around 15k graded total.
How many raws?
How many left in boxes?
How many left to be still graded?

[KingKuba]

I'll give you some crazy numbers.
There's 5000 Walmarts in North America.
Each Walmart would easily have gotten a 100 blasters for each series run.


That's another 20 000 YG's

Plus all the blasters LCS's would get.

Now move on to Tins that Walmart and LCS would get.

Now we have the Retail boxes with 6 yg's.

Don't forget Target gets tons of retail too.


100k McDavid YG's would actually not be surprising.

[Fred Bear]

That's because they all got sent to BGS at the time because PSA was not the "it" place to send YG's.
BGS has almost 10k of them graded...

If you add PSA plus BGS that's already around 15k graded total.
How many raws?
How many left in boxes?
How many left to be still graded?

I'll give you some crazy numbers.
There's 5000 Walmarts in North America.
Each Walmart would easily have gotten a 100 blasters for each series run.


That's another 20 000 YG's

Plus all the blasters LCS's would get.

Now move on to Tins that Walmart and LCS would get.

Now we have the Retail boxes with 6 yg's.

Don't forget Target gets tons of retail too.


100k McDavid YG's would actually not be surprising.

The BGS numbers are severely inflated and they have even admitted it in several interviews. A BGS 9.5 McDavid sells, today, for $1k-$1.5k while a PSA 10 sells for $2.5k. A BGS 10, however, sells for $5k and a Black Label can go over $10k. As Beckett has acknowledged, the number of collectors who receive a BGS 9.5, crack it and send it in for regrade has been a high percentage as the cost of grading is a fraction of the difference between a BGS 9.5 and a BGS 10. Even regrading 2-3 times and then crossing over to a PSA 10 can be profitable. The fact that the PSA population is still only in the 3-4k range shows (1) hockey cards are still under appreciated and (2) the raw population of McDavids is nowhere near 100k.

For your calculation estimates, you're not basing anything on reality. Even in the current market, each Walmart and Target, in hockey-heavy markets, is probably sourcing no more than 20-25 blasters, not 100. These decisions are also made locally, so the need for hockey in Arkansas, Alabama, and similar locations is probably even lower. Remember, Upper Deck's goal is to sell out to their distribution network and it's the distributors' goal to sell out to their reseller network. If UD produced on the assumption that 5000 Walmarts and 2000 Targets each wanted 100 blasters, then, sure, your numbers are possible. In 15-16, while the hockey world knew who McDavid was, it was still just a $100-150 card which was high, but 'normal'. UD may have upped their print run into the 25-30k range, but I wouldn't believe 100k without actual evidence that retail production was more than 500% greater than hobby production...

[30ranfordfan]

I have not looked at pop reports in a long time, but I would also point out that there's another reason why in 2015-16, the BGS population spikes for McDavid (vs earlier years) and Matthews (etc) have seemed high since too.


ePack / COMC


If you pull a card on ePack, you can transfer it to COMC. Then you can submit it for BGS grading. Not sure if that's still an option (I never did it) but you could have been submitting McDavid YGs to Beckett, without ever touching them.

[KingKuba]

The BGS numbers are severely inflated and they have even admitted it in several interviews. A BGS 9.5 McDavid sells, today, for $1k-$1.5k while a PSA 10 sells for $2.5k. A BGS 10, however, sells for $5k and a Black Label can go over $10k. As Beckett has acknowledged, the number of collectors who receive a BGS 9.5, crack it and send it in for regrade has been a high percentage as the cost of grading is a fraction of the difference between a BGS 9.5 and a BGS 10. Even regrading 2-3 times and then crossing over to a PSA 10 can be profitable. The fact that the PSA population is still only in the 3-4k range shows (1) hockey cards are still under appreciated and (2) the raw population of McDavids is nowhere near 100k.

For your calculation estimates, you're not basing anything on reality. Even in the current market, each Walmart and Target, in hockey-heavy markets, is probably sourcing no more than 20-25 blasters, not 100. These decisions are also made locally, so the need for hockey in Arkansas, Alabama, and similar locations is probably even lower. Remember, Upper Deck's goal is to sell out to their distribution network and it's the distributors' goal to sell out to their reseller network. If UD produced on the assumption that 5000 Walmarts and 2000 Targets each wanted 100 blasters, then, sure, your numbers are possible. In 15-16, while the hockey world knew who McDavid was, it was still just a $100-150 card which was high, but 'normal'. UD may have upped their print run into the 25-30k range, but I wouldn't believe 100k without actual evidence that retail production was more than 500% greater than hobby production...

BGS numbers are not inflated, the percentage of re-submits are small.
Grading in hockey is a very small percentage of total populations. It is the least graded sport. The most set collected. The most collected in Canada. Canada grades cards the least.
Everyone and their dog has a YG set here every year ungraded.

You think they were only stocking Walmart "once" with 20 blasters...?
They were stocking them every week for months and months.
I would not be surprised if 1 Walmart got a 1000 products of it during the whole year. Even if Alabama only got 20 blasters total...which would be hard to believe...That would still average out to a lot of blasters per store.

Then you have E-pack.

My LCS probably went thru 500 tins if not more. Hundreds of blasters. Along with cases and cases of hobby. They are tiny shop too.

You still have fat packs, cards at drug stores, toys r us.


Look at Crosby graded population. That was a really overproduced year too. Yet McDavid is 3x that graded population with less time to be graded.

Doubt will know the true number of them but there's obviously way too many of them.

[KingKuba]

I have not looked at pop reports in a long time, but I would also point out that there's another reason why in 2015-16, the BGS population spikes for McDavid (vs earlier years) and Matthews (etc) have seemed high since too.


ePack / COMC


If you pull a card on ePack, you can transfer it to COMC. Then you can submit it for BGS grading. Not sure if that's still an option (I never did it) but you could have been submitting McDavid YGs to Beckett, without ever touching them.

More Hobby.
More Retail.
ePack

= Lot of Young Guns.

[KingKuba]

2013-14 Series 1 was so flooded everywhere yet now that's considered short printed ...lol

I probably have 40 tins of it myself at home. Stuff was everywhere.

[Fred Bear]

BGS numbers are not inflated, the percentage of re-submits are small.
Grading in hockey is a very small percentage of total populations. It is the least graded sport. The most set collected. The most collected in Canada. Canada grades cards the least.
Everyone and their dog has a YG set here every year ungraded.

You think they were only stocking Walmart "once" with 20 blasters...?
They were stocking them every week for months and months.
I would not be surprised if 1 Walmart got a 1000 products of it during the whole year. Even if Alabama only got 20 blasters total...which would be hard to believe...That would still average out to a lot of blasters per store.

Then you have E-pack.

My LCS probably went thru 500 tins if not more. Hundreds of blasters. Along with cases and cases of hobby. They are tiny shop too.

You still have fat packs, cards at drug stores, toys r us.


Look at Crosby graded population. That was a really overproduced year too. Yet McDavid is 3x that graded population with less time to be graded.

Doubt will know the true number of them but there's obviously way too many of them.

I'm sorry, but I'll only argue actual data. I do believe, though, that providing collectors with bad information about populations or market size does a disservice to the community, so I think we should try hard to use data for these types of conversations. Many collectors already struggle with what defines 'rarity' and it only makes it harder when we over-estimate print runs.

Also, maybe you misunderstood me... BGS representatives have stated in interviews that the grading numbers of McDavid YGs are inflated due to resubmissions. I was repeating what BGS has said and documented, I was not postulating a hypothetical. They have admitted that there are NOT 7000+ BGS 9.5 cards and that the actual number is potentially less than half that number.

Believe me, I understand that Hockey collectors are a special breed. I've been doing this since 1980-81 and I can tell you that it's traditionally the most difficult to source, the most difficult to trade, etc. etc. Hockey is the niche hobby. It's the smallest. That's why 'over-production' becomes overblown pretty quickly with regards to the hockey segment.

The nice thing is, you can use actual data to see how 'small' the Hockey segment really is. The calculations provided early on in this thread are spot on. By using the numbered cards, you can quickly see that there are probably only 10-15k of each YG released in hobby packs. And hobby packs are where the majority of YGs are released. Epack only gets 10-20% of those cards and it pulls 100% from hobby, so you're not adding to the hobby production. For retail, it's 'unfortunately' a much smaller percentage than what you are making it sound.

Remember, hockey is so low volume for retail that when Target and Walmart recently banned sportscard and Pokemon sales - you could/can still buy hockey cards... They didn't even pull them from the shelves because nobody was fighting over S1 or S2, just the individual Pokemon packs, lol. Back in 2015, it was the same. McDavid was not nearly the value he is at today and could be found in the $150-200 range pretty easily with packs selling at normal levels. [I bought 2015 UD1 blasters on clearance at my local Target at the start of 2016]. Looking back, I think a lot of people WISH they would have bought 1000s of blasters for $20 each, but they didn't and Upper Deck didn't produce them in those numbers anyways.

Also remember that to add 5000 Connor McDavid YGs into circulation, you are really adding 250,000 total YGs which is almost 3,500 hobby cases. As a point of reference, there are less than 5000 total (16-box master) cases of OPC Platinum hobby released each year and less than 2000 total (16-box) cases of OPC hobby released each season.

Again, looking at real data...
12 raw McDavid YGs on ebay right now
4 raw Crosby YGs on ebay right now
>12 graded McDavid YGs on ebay right now
>4 graded Crosby YGs on ebay right now

If less than 5% of McDavids are graded and 100,000 McDavid YGs were produced, where are they all?