Base Card Productions

[Buckeyes]

When a base sports card is not short printed, nor serial numbered out of so many cards, how many cards on average are actually manufactured for a particular player?

Waiting to hear your responses, so please weigh in and state your case.
Thanks,
Greg

[RGM81]

The short answer is "we don't know."

For a product like Series 1/2/Extended, you have to factor in that there are multiple outlets for the product to be purchased. If it were just hobby, you could probably extrapolate those numbers relatively easily, much as people often do when coming up with production runs based on numbered cards and how regularly they fall in a product. If there's 100 Exclusives cards per player, 250 cards total, they fall every second box, do the math.

But you've also got retail, which comes in so many iterations: blaster boxes, mega boxes, retail boxes, fat packs, etc. Additionally, the digital Epack platform takes a chunk out of that physical print run and assigns "hits" solely to that venue. Which leads me to a cool diversion...

One positive that has come from Epack, and I'm grateful to my friend Chris Carlin for sharing this with me, is that Epack has allowed UD to significantly reduce their physical print runs for base cards. That means less trees getting cut down, less plastic packaging, less distribution...all great things for the environment.

Back on the main question, if there was a way to ascertain how much of a physical product is out there, you can get to those production numbers pretty easily. But as we have often seen UD and other manufacturers state, they "let the market decide" how much of the print is actually accessible. Pre-Epack it was pretty simple math to come up with the hobby print run for a Series 1/2 release based on the Exclusives, and that allows people to get a rough estimate as to the number of Young Guns available for the rookies. Obviously with the base cards being more plentiful (200 cards, 7 base to a pack, 24 packs per box, 12 boxes per case) that number would be significantly higher than what it was for the YG's.

[30ranfordfan]

Let me make an educated guess on Series 1/2

250 set. 100 Exclusives, 10 HG, printed of each card. That's 25,000 & 2,500 cards respectively.

You'll pull one of those 27,500 card every-other-box (on average) so let's assume there are roughly 55,000 hobby boxes produced, and about 10% of them are ePack.

So, I'm guessing there are roughly 50,000 hobby boxes of Series 1 or 2 made.

You get 24 packs per box, and 7 base cards per pack (normally) so that's 168 base cards (this is ONLY cards 1-200. The YG print runs are separate from this. You normally get one "hit" per pack... 6 of the hits in your box will be YGs).

168 x 55,000 = 8.4 million base cards printed for Series 1 (or 2) hobby boxes. Divide that by 200, and you're looking at 42,000 copies of a particular base card.

This is ONLY hobby boxes though. It doesn't include retail boxes - so I would suggest this number needs to be doubled, at least. Now we're up to 84,000 copies of a base card.

I'd be surprised if it's any lower than that, but it could be higher. We're getting awfully close to 100k - I think that's a pretty realistic number.

When a base sports card is not short printed, nor serial numbered out of so many cards, how many cards on average are actually manufactured for a particular player?

Waiting to hear your responses, so please weigh in and state your case.
Thanks,
Greg

The short answer is "we don't know."

For a product like Series 1/2/Extended, you have to factor in that there are multiple outlets for the product to be purchased. If it were just hobby, you could probably extrapolate those numbers relatively easily, much as people often do when coming up with production runs based on numbered cards and how regularly they fall in a product. If there's 100 Exclusives cards per player, 250 cards total, they fall every second box, do the math.

But you've also got retail, which comes in so many iterations: blaster boxes, mega boxes, retail boxes, fat packs, etc. Additionally, the digital Epack platform takes a chunk out of that physical print run and assigns "hits" solely to that venue. Which leads me to a cool diversion...

One positive that has come from Epack, and I'm grateful to my friend Chris Carlin for sharing this with me, is that Epack has allowed UD to significantly reduce their physical print runs for base cards. That means less trees getting cut down, less plastic packaging, less distribution...all great things for the environment.

Back on the main question, if there was a way to ascertain how much of a physical product is out there, you can get to those production numbers pretty easily. But as we have often seen UD and other manufacturers state, they "let the market decide" how much of the print is actually accessible. Pre-Epack it was pretty simple math to come up with the hobby print run for a Series 1/2 release based on the Exclusives, and that allows people to get a rough estimate as to the number of Young Guns available for the rookies. Obviously with the base cards being more plentiful (200 cards, 7 base to a pack, 24 packs per box, 12 boxes per case) that number would be significantly higher than what it was for the YG's.

[Fred Bear]

Let me make an educated guess on Series 1/2

250 set. 100 Exclusives, 10 HG, printed of each card. That's 25,000 & 2,500 cards respectively.

You'll pull one of those 27,500 card every-other-box (on average) so let's assume there are roughly 55,000 hobby boxes produced, and about 10% of them are ePack.

So, I'm guessing there are roughly 50,000 hobby boxes of Series 1 or 2 made.

You get 24 packs per box, and 7 base cards per pack (normally) so that's 168 base cards (this is ONLY cards 1-200. The YG print runs are separate from this. You normally get one "hit" per pack... 6 of the hits in your box will be YGs).

168 x 55,000 = 8.4 million base cards printed for Series 1 (or 2) hobby boxes. Divide that by 200, and you're looking at 42,000 copies of a particular base card.

This is ONLY hobby boxes though. It doesn't include retail boxes - so I would suggest this number needs to be doubled, at least. Now we're up to 84,000 copies of a base card.

I'd be surprised if it's any lower than that, but it could be higher. We're getting awfully close to 100k - I think that's a pretty realistic number.

In general, this is spot on. I think it's probably a little low in that you typically only net a numbered card (exclusives, HG, patches, parallels, etc.) every 2-3 boxes, so I would estimate the 'hobby' print run at closer to 60k-80k boxes or 55k-70k printed (non-epack) boxes. This would up the base numbers to 125k-150k once we include retail (I agree, probably doubling is safe) which are in-line and still pretty realistic.

[Truth be told, this is probably still a little low... If you calculate YGs based on 80k hobby boxes and double it for retail, you are still shy of 20,000 for each YG. I think YGs are probably closer to 25k-30k, so either there is (1) greater production of retail than the 2x estimate, (2) greater production of hobby boxes, or (3) lower production of YGs than estimated. Always good to double check calculations!]

[30ranfordfan]

In general, this is spot on. I think it's probably a little low in that you typically only net a numbered card (exclusives, HG, patches, parallels, etc.) every 2-3 boxes, so I would estimate the 'hobby' print run at closer to 60k-80k boxes or 55k-70k printed (non-epack) boxes. This would up the base numbers to 125k-150k once we include retail (I agree, probably doubling is safe) which are in-line and still pretty realistic.

[Truth be told, this is probably still a little low... If you calculate YGs based on 80k hobby boxes and double it for retail, you are still shy of 20,000 for each YG. I think YGs are probably closer to 25k-30k, so either there is (1) greater production of retail than the 2x estimate, (2) greater production of hobby boxes, or (3) lower production of YGs than estimated. Always good to double check calculations!]

Yeah, it's impossible to really nail down a firm number. Best we can do is guess. I'm probably low-balling the numbers a bit... and one serial #ed parallel per 3 boxes instead of per 2 makes a huge difference in the calculation. Even if it was one every 2.5 boxes, that adds 25% of the final total.

Upper Deck is very good at hiding the print runs, of cards that they don't want us to know the print runs of.

[cjb]

Based on my visual observations I'm guessing base card production is way up compared to previous years. These days when you buy a blaster box, almost half the packs are base. I don't remember so many base card packs in a blaster box.

I'm also noticing that when I walk into a dollar tree that there are way more boxes of upper deck mini-packs than there were in the past.

[30ranfordfan]

Based on my visual observations I'm guessing base card production is way up compared to previous years. These days when you buy a blaster box, almost half the packs are base. I don't remember so many base card packs in a blaster box.

I'm also noticing that when I walk into a dollar tree that there are way more boxes of upper deck mini-packs than there were in the past.

Yeah, the retail packs are about that. 50% of them will be all base, the other half will have "hits".

The dollar tree stuff - that's just because there are more repackaged products. Someone is making decent money creating those things.

[cjb]

Dollarama sells repackaged cards....dollar tree sells legit upper deck products (4 cards per pack, 98% of all packs are base cards)

I might just be me, but I remember older blaster boxes seemed to have hits in 60%-90% of their packs. Now it's common to have half the packs being base.

Tins seem to be a little better when it comes to less base backs.. I opened a tin of series 2 and only got 1-2 base packs.

[pwaldo]

It really depends on the set. Some years and products have a very limited base print run that is actually less than some numbered cards. Also with some sets you can calculate or guesstimate the print run of the base but you need to know the odds on something #D across all the various forms of release (hobby, retail, special retail, etc).