@chopkins1994 I think you are estimating quite low for the print of base 1st charizard.
I estimated all of base set at 3B cards and the base 1st print run at less than 10% of that. 10% of that would lead to 300M base 1st cards printed and 1% of that would still lead to 30M. 30M total base 1st cards would still be *(1/11) packs, * (1/3) holos *(1/15) of each holo for 60,000 each base 1st holos.
I think that is a much more reasonable guess but honestly if anything I’d assume the real print might be slightly higher.
@gottaketchumall I very well may be underestimating that much. I was thinking your 3B was including foreign cards as well so when I thought of that I divided it by 2 and the numbers were at least a little closer. I feel like if there were 60k 1st ed charizards that we would see more than just under 4% of those graded.
It seems something like 60k might be more reasonable. I’m thinking maybe closer to 40-50k. Regardless, I think we are underestimating the amount of people who haven’t touched their cards or who simply don’t know/don’t want to grade them. A lot of people who first got into collecting during WOTC era are now in their 20s; getting their lives together, traveling, college, etc. Not everyone has time to go through or look at their collection, let alone grade their cards, if they even want to grade them. A lot of people may not remember even what they have as most of us started collecting when we were real young. I put most all of my collection in sleeves in the mid 2000s, and kept it, but didn’t really look at or appreciate them till years later. To this day I’ve never graded anything because I’m never selling them. I think a lot of people are in the same situation and the amount of graded vs ungraded could be vastly unaccounted for.
Bumping with the newest number since it came up elsewhere in case I do something with this down the line. Maybe it’ll be a good rainy COVID summer day project.
Through September 2019 there were 28.8 B+ cards shipped which means they shipped 1.6 B+ cards in the 6 months of March to September of 2019.
I honestly think the neo sets were vastly overestimated in my original post and the base set likely underestimated. I wouldn’t be surprised if 6 B + cards were from base set given all the various languages and print runs that set had.
Based on the amount of boxes we see of base being available (pre-COVID-19), i wouldn’t be surprised if base was MASSIVELY printed. Let’s remember what happened with MTG alpha, beta and unlimited… This is a company familiar with success and how that translates to volume in business. Therefore, I am comfortable with there being less than 10%, nay, even 5% ratio of 1st edition prints vs unlimited prints. When WoTC realized they had another mega hit franchise, they probably capitalized hard.
But this goes to show you how crazy collectible Pokemon is. MTG alpha rares each had 1100.
Yeah, the prices of Base Set Unlimited sealed product are astonishing given how gargantuan the print run was. MTG sets with extremely high print runs (i.e., 4ED, Ice Age, Fallen Empires) usually have a a very low price ceiling – Revised, of course, being the exception because of dual lands. With Pokemon, people seem MUCH more likely to open sealed product than in MTG. Nobody is opening boxes of Revised anymore, even though it’s highly iconic and nostalgic for many people and there’s a crap ton of it left. But people are still opening boxes of Base Set (and every WotC set) constantly, in most cases with the intent to grade the cards. I think the prevalence of PSA grading in the hobby has HUGELY accelerated the rate of decline in the supply (and increase in prices) for vintage sealed Pokemon product. Boxes of Base Set were literally $100 for over a decade after release. It being ~$8k a box now shows just how significant the sustained demand for it has been, and the extent of how much the supply of sealed boxes has declined as a result of that demand.
Based solely on the availability of the cards on the secondary market, the 1st Edition print run appears to have been substantially less than 10% of the print run.
Very interesting OP, I enjoyed the read. May I suggest a few things to consider and to use as proxy data:
Some random % of cards are lost, thrown away, played to oblivion. I don’t know what this percentage would be, maybe 50%? So a much smaller supply of collectible vintage cards -I assume this is the ultimate number to reach
Print runs and supplies can be approximated as a proportion of their Cost of Goods Sold for TPCI or gameshark e.t.c , if their balance sheets from 1996 (and each subsequent year can be found, a more accurate estimate of print runs should be achievable.
Print sheets for the set would show the actual rarity of a holo Machamp versus Charziard e.t.c. Not all holos are printed in the same quantity as each other. I would assume Charizard would have a 30%-50% scarcity premium on top of other cards on the print sheet (pulling numbers out of the air here). Estimates per card can be made this way
I can’t see the 2017 sold card numbers on the Pokemon website anymore. Am I correct to say that you divided the total cards sold up to 2017 with all the sets printed up until then, and then applied some other variables to come to the print run size of each set, including WOTC sets?
– Financial size of company (i.e success of company) is proportional to number of products sold, and TPCI has grown over the years. Dividing total cards sold up to 2017 by total sets might not be too representative. Maybe also weigh it for the company’s financial size per year
Other proxy data to use (US): historical average income per capita in, population size between the age of 6-15 and the growth rate of these categories. Maybe come correlation can be made between these numbers and the financial size of TPCI and/or TPC, and therefore also with print run sizes.
Wow coming from the MTG world, these print run numbers are astronomical.
Makes me nervous about my collecting into a psa 9 base unlimited set during this spike.
Base Unlimited was the highest print run set in the history of Pokemon. But it’s also the most popular set, bar none. So it’s not going to ever, within our lifetimes, go down to zero – there will always be some demand for it. But if demand ever does drop off significantly, it’s going to be the first set that experiences market saturation because there’s simply so much of it.
While I agree with @zorloth, do consider going for shadowless/1st ed in lower grades if you’re concerned about print run sizes. I guess it’ll be like collecting UL over revised
Nonetheless, if its for your personal collection, that’s fine right? Just gotta bite the bullet if that’s the case
I second the suggestion to go for 1st Edition or Shadowless (in either lower or higher grades). As anyone with experience collecting vintage MTG knows: Revised had a massive print run. Now multiply that x50 or x100 or x200 or some large multiple and you have the print run of Base Set Unlimited. So I personally don’t view Base Unlimited as collectible – like Revised, it’s just much too abundant. The real collectible set is 1st Edition Base. Though Shadowless is a decent alternative – it’s sort of like Beta vs. Alpha. And with Alpha and Beta, the gap in value has grown substantially over time. When I started collecting, Beta was worth roughly the same as Alpha. Now Alpha is obviously much more valuable. I would imagine the same happens with Shadowless Base and 1st Edition Base; except Shadowless has an additional risk beyond the risk that Beta has: it’s much less rare. 1st Edition Base, of course, is also much less rare than Beta, but it’s also the top dog, which means it will probably behave more like Alpha than Beta.
I know it’s not like a dollar to dollar comparison, but you could be picking up PSA 8 shadowless for the price of PSA 9 unlimited which is confusing to me, since grading is kinda subjective. I guess most people just dislike grades below 8? But if we’re talking about pure allocation of capital for the purpose of relatively higher levels of rarity, I could see just having an army of 1st edition base foils at PSA 4-5.
Yeah, between a PSA 8 Shadowless and PSA 9 Unlimited card, I would definitely rather have the Shadowless 8. But I do think that cards below PSA 9 quality are generally pretty unimpressive. So I can see the appeal of going for Unlimited 9s, especially if you don’t have the money for Shadowless or 1st Edition.
But if I were collecting graded Base Set cards, I would probably go for PSA 9 1st Edition and just purchase the cards more slowly. I find PSA 9/10 1st Edition Base cards more appealing from both an investment and collecting perspective. From a collecting perspective, having PSA 9/10 cards is more interesting because the vast majority of raw cards fall outside of that range, whereas there are many raw cards that could grade a 7/8 if they were submitted. And from an investment perspective, the pop reports of 9/10s from 1st Edition Base will increase the most slowly of any grades from any of the three Base Set variations. The financial incentive to grade mint 1st Edition Base holos has been there for two decades, so there aren’t a ton of mint holos that haven’t yet been graded. Whereas the incentive to grade PSA <9 quality holos from any Base Set variation hasn’t been there, so the pop reports will increase dramatically over time (especially for Unlimited).
How is that known info? All evidence points to Base Unlimited having had a larger print run than Jungle and Fossil. But Jungle and Fossil also had absolutely massive print runs, so I’m not sure that it matters which set had the most obscenely large print run.
I don’t know exactly, but my general sense is that it’s on the low-mid end of EX Series print runs. The late EX Series sets (i.e., Crystal Guardians, Power Keepers) had larger print runs than most early-mid EX Series sets (2003-2005, with some exceptions like FRLG). Delta Species is on the tail end of the mid-EX Series and it appears to have been printed less than later EX Series sets but also more than some of the earlier sets.
Delta Species sealed product, though, is particularly tough to find. Delta Species is among the most difficult EX Series boxes to find, and there weren’t that many supplemental products (tins, multi-pack blisters, etc.) that contained it. So as far as sealed product is concerned, Delta Species is S-tier.
Just gotta bite the bullet if that’s the case