An elaborate attempt at print run estimation. (WIP) 5-8-18

Elaborating further on what I teased in this post. This is a WIP (work in progress) as I plan to work on it further and refine it hopefully with further community input and more factual sources.
By the end my goal is to come up with an actual estimated number for each set released from base set through Sun and Moon and further show the implications of how many chase cards that may result in for each given set.

I will try to clearly call out all facts as such and all opinions/assumptions as such to keep this as unbiased and scientific as possible. Italicized points I am calling out for your help so feel free to chip in!
Bold and/or underlines are just to call out important info.

Facts:

  1. Through March 2017 over 23.6 billion cards have been shipped worldwide. Official Pokemon Source

  2. Through March 2017 we had 72 sets with sun and moon releasing 2-1-17. Bulbapedia Source

(If anyone has other official sources for print runs from Pokemon themselves feel free to share!)

This plot includes some questionable sources taken as true for this exercise

I feel this is a safe assumption given that they jive with the official Pokemon number and I speculate they came from official Pokemon sources at the times they were published.

Here is a plot with various print run estimates I took from several sources I found on the web that had times attributed to them. The red point is the direct from Pokemon data point.
The earliest sources from 1999 I feel were wild ass guesses by the media that well undershot the reality.

Assumptions:

ASSUME we had an even split between English/Non English since the beginning. (anyone have input on this assumption - i.e. which way it would skew in actuality? I assume English would outnumber foreign but am not entirely sure)
We would therefore have 23.6/2 or 11.8 billion English cards printed across 72 sets.

Further ASSUME we had an equal distribution between each and every set. (We all know this isn’t true)
That would equate to 11.8 B / 72 or ~164 million cards for each and every set.

We can essentially take this 164 million card amount as an absolute floor on the more popular sets (later XY and early WOTC) and use it as a absolute ceiling on the least popular sets (ex era, DP era, HGSS). We can ASSUME the very most popular set like base set were likely at least an order of magnitude higher print run wise which leads to 1.6 billion cards and some of the least popular sets likely have print runs half this or less. Let’s be conservative and put a floor of 80 million cards for the lowest print run. This would be on par with “The Dark” set for Magic TCG which had 75 million cards printed for a set released in 1994.

I honestly think the very highest set and the very lowest set could fall outside these bounds and I will work to try and narrow that down if I get more data points from official sources.

MTG Print run source

For anyone thinking 1.6 B as being too high for a single set, here is a source from worlds 2016 time frame that said 2.1 B cards had been shipped the past year. Also taking the original 23.6 B source as fact that already puts us near 1 B cards per year on average. We know that recent sets like Evolutions and early sets like Base-Jungle-Fossil could have easily achieved these 1B + numbers alone.
Especially given our source that put 2001 print numbers at 12 billion cards.

Note that by the end of 2001 only 10 sets existed all made by WOTC. That essentially means through neo revelation we averaged an astonishing 1B cards per set!

More Facts: For base/jungle/fossil we had 11 cards per pack, holos in 1/3 packs and 36 packs per box. Base and fossil each had 15 holos obtainable by packs and jungle had 16. Recall that Machamp was only in the 2 player starters.

Assuming 1.6 billion cards in base set would lead to 1.6 B * 1/3 * 1/11 * 1/15 so 3.23 million of each base holo. Here is a source from 1999 stating 2 million 2 player starter decks were sold at that point. This does nothing to estimate the split between base 1st/shadowless/unlimited/1999-2000. I would also guess this number is a lowball for base.

I have heard of an intended 10% 1st edition print run for WOTC sets? (Any thoughts/help here?)
I also heard that for base it ended up being less than that as they ultimately made much more unlimited product than they would have originally intended/guessed.

Let’s go ahead with the ASSUMPTION of 10% 1st edition for jungle/fossil.

3.23 million of each holo for fossil = > 323 thousand of each 1st edition holo

3.02 million of each holo for jungle = > 302 thousand of each 1st edition holo.

Put another way this leads to 160 million 1st edition cards or 160 M * 1/11 * 1/36 400,000 + booster boxes of 1st edition product for each set and 4,000,000 booster boxes worth of total product overall (not taking into account blisters, theme decks, promo prints etc.)

For a lower print gold star set like Team Rocket Returns my assumptions would lead to potentially as few as 80 million cards in that set.

We have 3 gold stars in that set and 9 cards per pack. 1 gold star per 2 boxes. So 80 M * 1/9 * 1/36 ~ 247,000 booster boxes.

247k * 1/3 * 1/2 ~ 41,000 of each gold star treeko, mudkip and torchic.

I am working on accumulating good numbers from newer releases on pull rates so I can estimate cards such as hyper rare zard as well as evolutions mega zard.

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For everyone’s eyes and sanity while navigating this guide please try to not quote the entire original post. If you have a question or something to add or address please trim it down so you are replying to only the specific point you are addressing.

I will use this spoiler to estimate individual print runs by set. This will be updated and refined over time. Initial estimates are wild ass guesses that attempt to mesh with the chart above. I’ll leave my initial WOTC estimates unspoiled as I assume they will garner the most interest.

My WOTC estimates (All languages)
1 Base Set - 3 B Cards
2 Jungle - 1.75 B Cards
3 Fossil - 1.75 B Cards
4 Base Set 2 - 600 M Cards
5 Team Rocket - 1.1 B Cards
6 Gym Heroes - 850 M Cards
7 Gym Challenge - 850 M Cards
8 Neo Genesis - 700 M Cards
9 Neo Discovery - 700 M Cards
10 Neo Revelation - 700 M Cards - 12 Billion end of 2001 checkpoint ( 1.2 B per set avg.)
11 Neo Destiny
12 Legendary Collection
13 Expedition Base Set
14 Aquapolis
15 Skyridge

Rest of the Sets

16 EX Ruby & Sapphire
17 EX Sandstorm
18 EX Dragon
19 EX Team Magma vs Team Aqua
20 EX Hidden Legends
21 EX FireRed & LeafGreen
22 EX Team Rocket Returns
23 EX Deoxys
24 EX Emerald
25 EX Unseen Forces
26 EX Delta Species
27 EX Legend Maker
28 EX Holon Phantoms
29 EX Crystal Guardians
30 EX Dragon Frontiers
31 EX Power Keepers
32 Diamond & Pearl
33 Mysterious Treasures
34 Secret Wonders
35 Great Encounters
36 Majestic Dawn
37 Legends Awakened
38 Stormfront
39 Platinum
40 Rising Rivals
41 Supreme Victors
42 Arceus
43 HeartGold & SoulSilver
44 Unleashed
45 Undaunted
46 Triumphant
47 Call of Legends
48 Black & White
49 Emerging Powers
50 Noble Victories
51 Next Destinies
52 Dark Explorers
53 Dragons Exalted
54 Boundaries Crossed
55 Plasma Storm
56 Plasma Freeze
57 Plasma Blast
58 Legendary Treasures 21.5 B checkpoint (9.5 B since last, 200M card per set avg)
59 XY
60 Flashfire
61 Furious Fists
62 Phantom Forces
63 Primal Clash
64 Roaring Skies
65 Ancient Origins
66 BREAKthrough
67 BREAKpoint
68 Generations
69 Fates Collide
70 Steam Siege
71 Evolutions
72 Sun & Moon - 23.6 billion through March 2017 (2.1 B since last, 150 M per set avg)
73 Guardians Rising
74 Burning Shadows
75 Shining Legends
76 Crimson Invasion
77 Ultra Prism
78 Forbidden Light

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Nice work!

WotC mentioned that 1st Edition runs were the first 3 days of each sets production (doubt this is true for base 1st though). Not sure what that’d calculate percentage wise to but it’s all the info I’ve seen “officially” on it:

  1. What is the ratio of first edition cards to Unlimited cards?
    1st edition are printed for 3 days only, the unlimited are still print, so whatever 3 into infinity is.

  2. What is this talk about first edition booster packs?
    1st edition cards are printed for the 1st 3 days of a new set of cards ONLY and then never printed again. The boosters have the 1st edition stamp on them and all of the cards in that booster will have the stamp as well.

  3. Why do WotC stop making TR 1st edition cards in a few days… that isn’t enough time for us!
    1st edition cards are only printed the first 3 days we make the cards. They are for sale as long as the supply lasts. We still have them for sale on our online store if you can’t find them in your area.

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Very interesting. However, I think the 12B number from 1999-2001 from your source is crazy. That leaves only 11.6B from 2002 to March 2017? There’s just no way. Do we even have financial data from WOTC or Nintendo from back in the day that would show such high revenue? We’re talking upwards of 1B booster packs here… Even assuming they sold them to distributors for $1.80-ish($65/box or so, I have no idea what they pay) you’re looking at $1.8B in a couple years.

While your Base-Fossil numbers are very possible although they seem quite high, I don’t think Base 2 did anywhere close to 20% of the original Base Set or that 60M packs of each Neo sets were printed.

I’m definitely looking forward to your updates and I’m hoping that some day we may have some more solid data. It’s weird that these companies refuse to reveal the numbers.
Edit: Maybe the 12B is accurate, but perhaps Base accounts for like half and that’s why your estimates on other sets look too high to me. The thing with Base is it had several print runs and it was released in almost every language. It was absolutely massive worldwide. If I were to put 5-6B Base 2B Jungle and 2B Fossil, the other sets might look more realistic. I just wouldn’t expect more than 10% of Base on some of them, if even that.

This is astonishing work!

There’s also the distribution of promo cards from both English and Japanese which could count as a set alone.

I think when the day comes that we actually find out estimated print numbers, it will shock us all how many cards are being produced as early as base.

@poken00b88 honestly I don’t think the early WOTC are too out of line overall. Set by set sure I was just mostly guessing and could have fairly significantly missed the mark. I’m not sure I’m convinced of my 50/50 split between English and foreign and I’m just realizing now as I type this that when I made the current numbers for the first 10 sets I forgot to subtract out foreign cards. So I guess halve all of those or take those as numbers total between English and Japanese sets (and other foreign sets) for now.

I’m feeling like the XY era at 150M avg per set is surprising that it is lower than EX-BW era average of 200M per set. I wouldn’t think that would be the case but it is just so hard to say. I really wish I had kept tabs on this over the past several years. I will definitely keep a close eye on the official Pokemon source and catch every update that makes. As I mentioned earlier I think most the numbers as good because it feels as if they were likely just grabbing the official number from the same source.

I’ll add some info on the Japanese side. While researching for this article I came across this research paper. Basically it outlines the history of Pokemon including the TCG and has some vital print run information.

Here’s some copy paste from the article:

  • 87 million Pokemon cards were shipped between 20 October 1996 and 31 March 1997, this includes Base Set, Jungle and promo cards
  • After 1 year, 180 million Pokemon cards were shipped
  • Between April 1997 and March 1998 - 499 Million cards were shipped

I wouldn’t be surprised if there was 2 Billion Japanese Pokemon cards in circulation before the English release in 1999. So you could use that info to subtract from the total or use it to predict equivalent English print numbers but I would suspect that the English print would follow more along the WOTC model rather than Media Factory.

@gottaketchumall I like that 2 million 2 Player decks sold info I reckon that could be a good insight into general figures, pity it is a bit vague could $10 2 player sets mean spread across the 5 decks? Also I am assuming that these figures are US only too as it seems low if including international releases of English

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Am I reading your OP correctly in that you think there may be ONLY 80 million Team Rocket Returns cards in existence? I always suspected 3rd gen cards were on the very low end of production, but wow lol

Yeah I think there are some sets which would have a fair bit less than that even. I am trying to find more concrete sources like the official Pokemon one that I have for the 23.6 B number. The numbers I see now for XY sets seems far too low but maybe not. As you can see the average sets past skyridge have about 150-200M cards printed for all languages. Being that the late WOTC fell after that I’d imagine those were a fair bit higher. Then the late XY era I would imagine were a lot higher than those numbers as well.

I wouldn’t honestly be surprised looking at these numbers if some sets had as low as 50M or less cards printed. Assuming 50M cards in a set would put the following print numbers for chase cards.

Gold star (set with 2) ~38.6 k of each gold star
Gold star (set with 3) ~ 25.7 k of each gold star
SL Call of Legends ~27.77 k of each shiny

Note again the above were estimates made with the assumption of 50M cards in those sets. Also assuming all product is booster boxes. If there were actually 25M cards in those sets print runs then it would be half what I put and if it were 500M cards in those sets it’d be 10x my number.

Would be incredible to see what eseries print runs look like. The info around is so scarce it’s ridiculous

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I wonder if you could estimate the numbers by looking at PSA pop reports (for example for a shining or crystal or gold star)and assume only 20-30% of the total population were actually sent to PSA. Then, coupled with info on pull rate, you could try to estimate the overall set print run.

Why won’t WOTC just say? Not like they have any skin in the game now anyways…

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@gottaketchumall , So looking at the graph, in 2003 there were 10 billion cards printed. Does this mean that in a set like Ex Dragon where there were 97 cards in the set (plus a few extras), you could take 97/10 billion to see what amount of commons were made (around 100,000,000) and then for uncommons maybe half of that (50,000,000) and then for rares maybe 250,000,000? Something like that?

I know those numbers dont add up back to 10Billion, I’m just wondering what the estimates for a single holo in a set would be based on that graph

In 2003 the cumulative total of Pokemon cards printed were 10 billion. There weren’t 10 billion printed in 2003 alone.

So based on this and the amount of sets/unique cards printed in 2003, what would a guestimatiom be on the number of a rare holo from that print window?

@chrisbalestra if you work through my whole OP you can see how I estimate it. Depending on the set you are interested in you may just need to change to reflect the amount of cards per pack.

I look forward to seeing new information on this in the future. I think your numbers are fairly accurate. They are definitely well educated guesses and I think you’re right that 1st ed base ended up being much less than 10% of the total run. I’m sure WOTC at the time didn’t plan for base set to be so popular and they really fired up the printers and got as much product out as they could. It’s saturation still shows 20 year later where you can get unlimited holos for just a few dollars each.

1st ed base charizard is the most iconic card in the hobby and I believe has the highest percentage of cards graded compared to cards released. It’s harder to find an authentic raw copy than a graded one at this point so I think we can use that to our advantage to find a rough estimate of total 1st ed base print run. PSA pop report shows 2,043 and BGS shows 229. I think it’s safe to combine those and round down to 2,200 to account for people cracking cases and regrading. So we know there are close to 2,200 graded copies, if we even just double that for raw copies (which honestly I’d be surprised if there’s that many) that would put us at 4,400. We have to account for copies destroyed over the years as well which we have no way of knowing but can throw a rough estimate of another 20% of what we have to be on the safe side. That puts my rough estimate at 5,280 copies of 1st edition charizard. Reverse your math and that gives us a total of ~ 3,564,000 total 1st edition base set cards, ~ 237,600 booster packs, and enough packs for ~6,600 booster boxes minus whatever was used to make blisters.

That’s a super rough estimate on my part so take it with a grain of salt but I think it’s a decent guideline. If we go off of pop report and general ungraded availability, the statistics support the idea of 1st ed base and shadowless having similar quantity print runs and unlimited having its 7-8 estimated print runs.

Good work chop but, thinking 1/3 of all 1st Base chars have been graded has to be off. Or not?

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Just using this bump to timestamp a new update from this source: It now shows over 25.7 billion cards shipped worldwide through March 2018. Through March 2017 we were at 23.6 billion cards.

2.1 billion cards were shipped in one year! I need to get back and work on this more.

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What do you think? Should that number be more or less? You have been in the hobby more seriously and much longer than I have so I would trust your own opinion ten times over mine. These were just rough estimates and thoughts I had while bored at home today lol we know that there should AT LEAST be 2,200 copies plus any raw copies we can currently locate. Really wish wotc would release print numbers (if they even have them archived) after a certain number of years. At this point, I don’t think knowing the 1st ed base print run wouldn’t even move the market because it’s so embedded already. It would just ease the minds of us collectors who overthink things.