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

[chrispy]

@zorloth

@chrispy

So it’s weird that I’d rather have the psa 5 1st ed shadowless to the psa9 unlimited I guess. Works for me

Not at all weird; my preference is the same.

[gottaketchumall]

@gottaketchumall

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.

Trading Card Game - Total shipments over 30.4 billion cards (as of the end of March 2020)

I’m very interested to see the numbers over the next year. This number from March shows that for two successive 6 month periods they printed ~1.6B cards.

corporate.pokemon.co.jp/en/aboutus/figures/

[zorloth]

@gottaketchumall , found another official distribution number:

Quote #1: “Since 1996, children have collected and traded over 13 billion Pokémon Trading Cards worldwide.”

Quote #2: “The Pokémon Trading Card Game, fueled by organized play programs around the world, has spurred global sales of more than 13 billion cards to date.”

– March 3rd, 2005

link

So this adds an important mid-point distribution number, I think – should help to narrow down print run estimates.

[surfingpikachu]

@gottaketchumall, any chance you can update your May 2018 numbers to end of 2020 Vivid Voltage? With the pandemic demand just off the charts, are the factory smokestacks firing 24/7 to keep up with demand going into 2021?

I know very little about modern cards but for years I would ignore the displays while checking out at Target or Walmart, recently I noticed these shelves are now completely empty. Same goes for Dollar Tree 3 card packs, gone!

What troubles me is I don’t think its the kiddos emptying these shelves

[zorloth]

Now that the thread has been bumped, I figure I might as well expand on what the official 13 billion figure from 2005 tells us:

Base through Deoxys (January 1999 to February 2005) – 13 billion cards distributed

Emerald through S&M Base (March 2005 to March 2017) – 10.6 billion cards distributed

I’ll call these eras #1 and #2 for simplicity’s sake. Interestingly enough, era #1 lasted for almost exactly half as long era #2 (6 years vs. 12 years). Additionally, Era #1 had 23 main set releases and Era #2 had 52 main set releases. Despite Era #2 having more than twice as many sets, significantly fewer cards were printed. If we average the print run across sets, we can see that the mean era #1 set print run was 565 million cards and the the mean era #2 set print run was 204 million cards.

Of course, the print runs varied from set to set. I think it’s safe to assume that Base Set and EX Deoxys didn’t have equally sized print runs. @gottaketchumall estimated, on page 2, that Base set print runs alone likely totaled over 3 billion cards. Based on this figure, it seems safe to assume that at least half of the 13 billion cards printed in era #1 were printed across Base, Jungle, Fossil, Base Set 2, and Team Rocket. So that leaves at most 6.5 billion cards printed from Gym Heroes through EX Deoxys. It’s common knowledge that Gym Heroes through Neo Revelation (5 sets total) print runs were significantly larger than each of those from the Neo Destiny through EX Deoxys sets (13 sets total). Given this, I think we can make another very safe assumption: that less than 2.5 billion cards were printed from Neo Destiny through EX Deoxys (I can expand on why I think this is a safe assumption if people want to know). So that leaves us with 13 sets across which at most 2.5 billion cards were printed (in all likelihood significantly less, since my assumptions about the print run distribution across sets were very conservative).

This leads us to the following very, very conservative conclusion: the mean print run of the sets Neo Destiny through EX Deoxys were each lower than 200 million cards. And likely significantly less for certain sets (i.e., Skyridge had a smaller print run than Expedition). I think that we can very conservatively assume that notoriously scarce sets like (Skyridge and EX Deoxys) each had print runs under 100 million cards . And based on era #2 print run figures, it seems highly possible (if not probable) that sets like Skyridge and EX Deoxys each had print runs of **under 50 million cards.**My honest guess, based on all of the numbers, is that the early EX Series sets (which are the sets I’m most interested in – sorry to those who don’t care about them lol) had print runs of between 35 million and 100 million cards each. This means that, on the low end, there were ~15,000 of each EX Deoxys gold star printed. And that, on the high end, there were as many as ~50,000 of each EX Deoxys gold star printed. We can make similar inferences about the number of other cards printed from the scarcer sets: that, for instance, between ~50,000 and ~150,000 of each EX Dragon holo were printed. These are large ranges, sure, but they are still narrower ranges than we could’ve previously inferred.

DISCLAIMER: This is all inductive guesswork. For this reason, the ranges I give are intentionally large.

EDIT: one last factor I realized I didn’t consider is that part of the print runs of sets are also in the form of products (i.e., theme decks) that don’t contain a chance of having cards like gold stars or non-theme deck holos. So my 15,000-50,000 estimate for each EX Deoxys gold star and my 50,000-150,000 estimate for each EX Dragon holo (besides the theme deck ones, of course) are too high. The actual ranges will be somewhat lower.

[randox]

@zorloth

Now that the thread has been bumped, I figure I might as well expand on what the official 13 billion figure from 2005 tells us:

Base through Deoxys (January 1999 to February 2005) – 13 billion cards distributed

Emerald through S&M Base (March 2005 to March 2017) – 10.6 billion cards distributed

I’ll call these eras #1 and #2 for simplicity’s sake. Interestingly enough, era #1 lasted for almost exactly half as long era #2 (6 years vs. 12 years). Additionally, Era #1 had 23 main set releases and Era #2 had 52 main set releases. Despite Era #2 having more than twice as many sets, significantly fewer cards were printed. If we average the print run across sets, we can see that the mean era #1 set print run was 565 million cards and the the mean era #2 set print run was 204 million cards.

Of course, the print runs varied from set to set. I think it’s safe to assume that Base Set and EX Deoxys didn’t have equally sized print runs. @gottaketchumall estimated, on page 2, that Base set print runs alone likely totaled over 3 billion cards. Based on this figure, it seems safe to assume that at least half of the 13 billion cards printed in era #1 were printed across Base, Jungle, Fossil, Base Set 2, and Team Rocket. So that leaves at most 6.5 billion cards printed from Gym Heroes through EX Deoxys. It’s common knowledge that Gym Heroes through Neo Revelation (5 sets total) print runs were significantly larger than each of those from the Neo Destiny through EX Deoxys sets (13 sets total). Given this, I think we can make another very safe assumption: that less than 2.5 billion cards were printed from Neo Destiny through EX Deoxys (I can expand on why I think this is a safe assumption if people want to know). So that leaves us with 13 sets across which at most 2.5 billion cards were printed (in all likelihood significantly less, since my assumptions about the print run distribution across sets were very conservative).

This leads us to the following very, very conservative conclusion: the mean print run of the sets Neo Destiny through EX Deoxys were each lower than 200 million cards. And likely significantly less for certain sets (i.e., Skyridge had a smaller print run than Expedition). I think that we can very conservatively assume that notoriously scarce sets like (Skyridge and EX Deoxys) each had print runs under 100 million cards . And based on era #2 print run figures, it seems highly possible (if not probable) that sets like Skyridge and EX Deoxys each had print runs of **under 50 million cards.**My honest guess, based on all of the numbers, is that the early EX Series sets (which are the sets I’m most interested in – sorry to those who don’t care about them lol) had print runs of between 35 million and 100 million cards each. This means that, on the low end, there were ~15,000 of each EX Deoxys gold star printed. And that, on the high end, there were as many as ~50,000 of each EX Deoxys gold star printed. We can make similar inferences about the number of other cards printed from the scarcer sets: that, for instance, between ~50,000 and ~150,000 of each EX Dragon holo were printed. These are large ranges, sure, but they are still narrower ranges than we could’ve previously inferred.

DISCLAIMER: This is all inductive guesswork. For this reason, the ranges I give are intentionally large.

EDIT: one last factor I realized I didn’t consider is that part of the print runs of sets are also in the form of products (i.e., theme decks) that don’t contain a chance of having cards like gold stars or non-theme deck holos. So my 15,000-50,000 estimate for each EX Deoxys gold star and my 50,000-150,000 estimate for each EX Dragon holo (besides the theme deck ones, of course) are too high. The actual ranges will be somewhat lower.

Great analysis!

For some reason I feel the print runs would be even smaller than 15k each gold star in deoxys for example. That would imply 90000 boxes worldwide as well. Also seems high to me. This is more of a gut feel. Only 300-400 rayquaza gold star have been graded. Where is the other 14500? Obviously many are lost, damaged and maybe even thrown away over the years but I would think it wouldn’t be this much. EG: you are implying that 97% of rayquaza’s printed have not been graded. I would have thought this number would be a lot lower for such a big card.

[zorloth]

@randox

@zorloth

Now that the thread has been bumped, I figure I might as well expand on what the official 13 billion figure from 2005 tells us:

Base through Deoxys (January 1999 to February 2005) – 13 billion cards distributed

Emerald through S&M Base (March 2005 to March 2017) – 10.6 billion cards distributed

I’ll call these eras #1 and #2 for simplicity’s sake. Interestingly enough, era #1 lasted for almost exactly half as long era #2 (6 years vs. 12 years). Additionally, Era #1 had 23 main set releases and Era #2 had 52 main set releases. Despite Era #2 having more than twice as many sets, significantly fewer cards were printed. If we average the print run across sets, we can see that the mean era #1 set print run was 565 million cards and the the mean era #2 set print run was 204 million cards.

Of course, the print runs varied from set to set. I think it’s safe to assume that Base Set and EX Deoxys didn’t have equally sized print runs. @gottaketchumall estimated, on page 2, that Base set print runs alone likely totaled over 3 billion cards. Based on this figure, it seems safe to assume that at least half of the 13 billion cards printed in era #1 were printed across Base, Jungle, Fossil, Base Set 2, and Team Rocket. So that leaves at most 6.5 billion cards printed from Gym Heroes through EX Deoxys. It’s common knowledge that Gym Heroes through Neo Revelation (5 sets total) print runs were significantly larger than each of those from the Neo Destiny through EX Deoxys sets (13 sets total). Given this, I think we can make another very safe assumption: that less than 2.5 billion cards were printed from Neo Destiny through EX Deoxys (I can expand on why I think this is a safe assumption if people want to know). So that leaves us with 13 sets across which at most 2.5 billion cards were printed (in all likelihood significantly less, since my assumptions about the print run distribution across sets were very conservative).

This leads us to the following very, very conservative conclusion: the mean print run of the sets Neo Destiny through EX Deoxys were each lower than 200 million cards. And likely significantly less for certain sets (i.e., Skyridge had a smaller print run than Expedition). I think that we can very conservatively assume that notoriously scarce sets like (Skyridge and EX Deoxys) each had print runs under 100 million cards . And based on era #2 print run figures, it seems highly possible (if not probable) that sets like Skyridge and EX Deoxys each had print runs of **under 50 million cards.**My honest guess, based on all of the numbers, is that the early EX Series sets (which are the sets I’m most interested in – sorry to those who don’t care about them lol) had print runs of between 35 million and 100 million cards each. This means that, on the low end, there were ~15,000 of each EX Deoxys gold star printed. And that, on the high end, there were as many as ~50,000 of each EX Deoxys gold star printed. We can make similar inferences about the number of other cards printed from the scarcer sets: that, for instance, between ~50,000 and ~150,000 of each EX Dragon holo were printed. These are large ranges, sure, but they are still narrower ranges than we could’ve previously inferred.

DISCLAIMER: This is all inductive guesswork. For this reason, the ranges I give are intentionally large.

EDIT: one last factor I realized I didn’t consider is that part of the print runs of sets are also in the form of products (i.e., theme decks) that don’t contain a chance of having cards like gold stars or non-theme deck holos. So my 15,000-50,000 estimate for each EX Deoxys gold star and my 50,000-150,000 estimate for each EX Dragon holo (besides the theme deck ones, of course) are too high. The actual ranges will be somewhat lower.

Great analysis!

For some reason I feel the print runs would be even smaller than 15k each gold star in deoxys for example. That would imply 90000 boxes worldwide as well. Also seems high to me. This is more of a gut feel. Only 300-400 rayquaza gold star have been graded. Where is the other 14500? Obviously many are lost, damaged and maybe even thrown away over the years but I would think it wouldn’t be this much. EG: you are implying that 97% of rayquaza’s printed have not been graded. I would have thought this number would be a lot lower for such a big card.

Thank you! One thing to remember is that it would imply 90,000 boxes worth of packs — not necessarily 90,000 booster boxes. Many packs were distributed in tins, blisters, and the like. And if theme decks were a significant portion of the print run for these sets, then that could also mean the 15,000 figure is too high.

I don’t think only 3% of Rayquaza gold stars having been graded is that low. Compare it to cards for which we know exactly how many were printed. For instance, the WB creator cards. There were 5250 of each distributed, but each only has a PSA pop of ~50, which is 1% of the print run. I think people tend to overestimate how prevalent grading is. You have to remember that the vast majority of GS Rayquazas were opened by 7-12 year old kids back in 2005. How many have known whereabouts now? It wouldn’t surprise me if 75% of them have been lost to time. And of the ones that haven’t been lost, how many have been preserved in nice enough condition to be worth grading? Very few. I think that’s the explanation for the low 9/10 pops, not that there were fewer than 10k printed.

[randox]

@zorloth

@randox

Great analysis!

For some reason I feel the print runs would be even smaller than 15k each gold star in deoxys for example. That would imply 90000 boxes worldwide as well. Also seems high to me. This is more of a gut feel. Only 300-400 rayquaza gold star have been graded. Where is the other 14500? Obviously many are lost, damaged and maybe even thrown away over the years but I would think it wouldn’t be this much. EG: you are implying that 97% of rayquaza’s printed have not been graded. I would have thought this number would be a lot lower for such a big card.

Thank you! One thing to remember is that it would imply 90,000 boxes worth of packs — not necessarily 90,000 booster boxes. Many packs were distributed in tins, blisters, and the like. And if theme decks were a significant portion of the print run for these sets, then that could also mean the 15,000 figure is too high.

I don’t think only 3% of Rayquaza gold stars having been graded is that low. Compare it to cards for which we know exactly how many were printed. For instance, the WB creator cards. There were 5250 of each distributed, but each only has a PSA pop of ~50, which is 1% of the print run. I think people tend to overestimate how prevalent grading is. You have to remember that the vast majority of GS Rayquazas were opened by 7-12 year old kids back in 2005. How many have known whereabouts now? It wouldn’t surprise me if 75% of them have been lost to time. And of the ones that haven’t been lost, how many have been preserved in nice enough condition to be worth grading? Very few. I think that’s the explanation for the low 9/10 pops, not that there were fewer than 10k printed.

Yeah fair enough. good point in regards to distribution. Guess we will never really know for sure what the % lost etc is… I would say the incentive is now there to grade even a psa 1 GS ray but it will take time for these to be graded given the current backlog.

[gottaketchumall]

Saw Ludkins Media post on IG that prompted me that the numbers have been updated.

34.1 B cards sold through March 2021. So 3.7B cards were printed in the last year compared to ~3.2B the year prior. In spite of the pandemic they were able to exceed the prior years print numbers though we know that was still largely insufficient to satisfy demand.

corporate.pokemon.co.jp/en/aboutus/figures/

[seafoamarticuno]

It’s crazy to see that the total number of cards printed over an 8-10 year span, including all EX, DPPt, HGSS, and BW sets (just under 40 English sets??) is equivalent to the number of cards printed in the past year and a half, basically Sword & Shield through Chilling Reign.

[minilopo]

Went through Hasbros financial accounts 1999-2003 quite handy as the sales of PTCG will relate solely to English releases unlike the yearly figures we rely on in later years.

Firstly two tid bits:

1. NY Times Apr 26 1999 an article states 1bn cards sold in Japan (this was to therefore set up business readers of the paper’s expectations for how the US launch would perform but nicely gives a figure for total japanese cards up to April 1999).

2)I believe this was from a book about the rise and fall of Pikachu 1999-2004 but in any regard is itself referenced “The trading card game adapted and distributed by Wizards of the Coast became an especially large hit. They failed to get cards out before the end of December, 1998 so they missed most of the holiday market but still ended up selling 50 million cards by March (Kaplan, 1999 March 1) Wizards, like Hasbro, was unable to produce enough cards to meet the demand for them. A strong secondary collectors market emerged that pushed the value of certain cards to extreme heights. (Some cards are now valued in price guides at over $150). A Front Page story in the New York Times (King, 1999 April 26) reported that a mother and her sons camped out in parking lot to beat the crowd at “Pokemon Trading Card Game Tour” at a local shopping mall. By the end of July, Wizards of the Coast was into its 10th printing, basically exhausting the available card printing factories in the United States. (Hasbro later purchased the rights to distribute the game cards).”

So much for calling Base Set 2000 “4th print” XD.

Anyhow Here are some parts of my research ive been using to build my personal production estimate database.

Hasbro talked in terms of annual and quarterly sales figures as is normal in accounts. Off that i did some notes and guess estimates in right hand columns that do have my interpretations weaved in so take with a pinch of salt. Also in terms of cards produced notes i was just very loosely basing it on MRSP. I do not know the revenue Hasbro got as a % of the MRSP at the time. These notes were for my personal use to weigh up loosely what i was thinking of buying take them with a massive pinch of salt i just thought you’d rather see my thinking than not.

Raw Hasbro Figures
imgur.com/dKC4MFJ

Extrapolating Quaterly figures to years that didnt have them & Notes

imgur.com/lZYbviI

*edit* Embedding as pictures did not work so ive just left the Imgur links

[mitty]

@randox

@zorloth

Thank you! One thing to remember is that it would imply 90,000 boxes worth of packs — not necessarily 90,000 booster boxes. Many packs were distributed in tins, blisters, and the like. And if theme decks were a significant portion of the print run for these sets, then that could also mean the 15,000 figure is too high.

I don’t think only 3% of Rayquaza gold stars having been graded is that low. Compare it to cards for which we know exactly how many were printed. For instance, the WB creator cards. There were 5250 of each distributed, but each only has a PSA pop of ~50, which is 1% of the print run. I think people tend to overestimate how prevalent grading is. You have to remember that the vast majority of GS Rayquazas were opened by 7-12 year old kids back in 2005. How many have known whereabouts now? It wouldn’t surprise me if 75% of them have been lost to time. And of the ones that haven’t been lost, how many have been preserved in nice enough condition to be worth grading? Very few. I think that’s the explanation for the low 9/10 pops, not that there were fewer than 10k printed.

Yeah fair enough. good point in regards to distribution. Guess we will never really know for sure what the % lost etc is… I would say the incentive is now there to grade even a psa 1 GS ray but it will take time for these to be graded given the current backlog.

How do you think the playablility of the gold stars would effect the distribution of grades today? I’d assume it would mean less high grades left?

[randox]

@mitty

@randox

Yeah fair enough. good point in regards to distribution. Guess we will never really know for sure what the % lost etc is… I would say the incentive is now there to grade even a psa 1 GS ray but it will take time for these to be graded given the current backlog.

How do you think the playablility of the gold stars would effect the distribution of grades today? I’d assume it would mean less high grades left?

I think there would be little to no raw mint cards left from people who
Opened them back in 2005. All those would have been graded mostly by now. Majority of new high end graded gold stars is coming from pack openings today I’d say

[gottaketchumall]

Next week is finally the time to sit down and put in more work on this. Thanks @minilopo I intended to look into the early financials to see if anything useful could be extracted. Definitely appreciate you putting those together.

It’s definitely still going to have a lot of assumptions and guesswork, but I think it’s still all pretty interesting. I really do wish we had the annual number they’ve been publishing recently on their site for all of the years but I guess we’ve got what we’ve got and it’s better than nothing.

[minilopo]

@gottaketchumall

Next week is finally the time to sit down and put in more work on this. Thanks @minilopo I intended to look into the early financials to see if anything useful could be extracted. Definitely appreciate you putting those together.

It’s definitely still going to have a lot of assumptions and guesswork, but I think it’s still all pretty interesting. I really do wish we had the annual number they’ve been publishing recently on their site for all of the years but I guess we’ve got what we’ve got and it’s better than nothing.

Thanks I’ll probably write something up and post on here rather than just leave the fuzzy photos once i have the time. I am just getting used to the forum.

I found the website i got that quote from btw.

w3.salemstate.edu/~poehlkers/Emerson/Pokemon.html

The author (writing in 1999) in turn was referencing quite a stylistically written Newsweek article for the 50m figure, which must have come from Wizards with the journalist either asking or the company publishing the figure to the press at the time. “Hasbro, buy me, buy me!” lol.

The other source he used that i had read as well was a pretty good Apr 1999 NYT article.

EDIT Forgot to mention:

I thought the 50m figure may be important as “by March” is literally a month after launch (Feb 1999) so probably relates to sales of 1st ed base set/ shadowless. If i guess that one printing is about 50m cards (asumming 50m is WotC sold out, they had to have the stock printed and packaged in order to sell it so soon after release), then you might be able to infer that either 50m is the total of 1st ed base set cards produced, or that 50m is the total produced of base set 1st AND shadowless, if you believe shadowless to be an unstamped part of that one printing.

So 50m could be roughly 10% or 5-10m cards 1st ed and the remainder 40-45 shadowless. You’d also need to account for english promos, demo sets etc but theyre so scarce i dont think they’d make much of a dent in 50m cards; a bigger problem would be Shadowless 2 player starter sets. But obviously this is getting a bit dangerous and I don’t want to piss people off so DYOR too

[minilopo]

Info on French card production in Pikachu’s Global Adventure: The Rise and Fall of Pokemon (ed Tobin et al. 2004).

In the article Pokemon in France (Brougére, G. 2004):

"At the end of it’s first year in France (November 2000), over 2.5 million Pokemon game cartridges had been sold and the Pokemonlicense had generated $300 million in revenue…

… With 500 million cards sold, record computer game sales , and more than two hundred licenses granted, it is easy to see that the Pokemon phenomenon was a great commercial success in France."

The article also states that Neo series only launched in France in “early 2001” so that 500 million card figure must only relate to sets up to Team Rocket as Bulbapedia states France did not get Base Set 2, Gym Heroes or Gym Challenge. They were also produced by Wizards of the coast so I’m going to have to factor that in to my Hasbro PTCG revenue estimates ><

I think that figure is also quite useful as a yard stick for other foreign language releases for countries with similar sized populations i.e. Germany, Italy & Spain but obviously they will still vary and Pokemon might be more popular and therefore printed in France than say Italy etc.

[wooltchi]

I know everyones interested in old school chase cards and their numbers which makes me curious how they compare to modern chase cards. I know tpci tries to keep the ultra/secret rares more rare despite huge printing numbers with low pull rates and high number of secret rares. For example, what would be the estimate number of a card like the rainbow charizard compared to a gold star… Obviously everyone and their mom are grading so the rainbow charizard is gonna have much better quality preservation over time but it’d be interesting to just compare numbers alone.

Also quite interesting to see how few cards were printed throughout 4th through 7th gen.

[kevinertia]

@wooltchi

I know everyones interested in old school chase cards and their numbers which makes me curious how they compare to modern chase cards. I know tpci tries to keep the ultra/secret rares more rare despite huge printing numbers with low pull rates and high number of secret rares. For example, what would be the estimate number of a card like the rainbow charizard compared to a gold star… Obviously everyone and their mom are grading so the rainbow charizard is gonna have much better quality preservation over time but it’d be interesting to just compare numbers alone.

Also quite interesting to see how few cards were printed throughout 4th through 7th gen.

Can’t speak to the print numbers, but the PSA 10 pop of Champion’s Path rainbow zard (6820) alone is comparable to the total pop of every English EX (5846) and gold star (2199 - 736 of which is from the dogs) combined. I think it’s also safe to assume that the pop for the zard is going to continue growing much faster than the EX era cards from here. The lower pull rates/secret rare dilution is a drop in the bucket compared to the massive increase in product being produced, opened, and preserved/graded.

[wooltchi]

@kevinertia

@wooltchi

I know everyones interested in old school chase cards and their numbers which makes me curious how they compare to modern chase cards. I know tpci tries to keep the ultra/secret rares more rare despite huge printing numbers with low pull rates and high number of secret rares. For example, what would be the estimate number of a card like the rainbow charizard compared to a gold star… Obviously everyone and their mom are grading so the rainbow charizard is gonna have much better quality preservation over time but it’d be interesting to just compare numbers alone.

Also quite interesting to see how few cards were printed throughout 4th through 7th gen.

Can’t speak to the print numbers, but the PSA 10 pop of Champion’s Path rainbow zard (6820) alone is comparable to the total pop of every English EX (5846) and gold star (2199 - 736 of which is from the dogs) combined. I think it’s also safe to assume that the pop for the zard is going to continue growing much faster than the EX era cards from here. The lower pull rates/secret rare dilution is a drop in the bucket compared to the massive increase in product being produced, opened, and preserved/graded.

That is crazy. I’m more surprised at how low the total pop is for ex and gold stars though. Less than 1500 excluding the infamous dogs

[zorloth]

@kevinertia

@wooltchi

I know everyones interested in old school chase cards and their numbers which makes me curious how they compare to modern chase cards. I know tpci tries to keep the ultra/secret rares more rare despite huge printing numbers with low pull rates and high number of secret rares. For example, what would be the estimate number of a card like the rainbow charizard compared to a gold star… Obviously everyone and their mom are grading so the rainbow charizard is gonna have much better quality preservation over time but it’d be interesting to just compare numbers alone.

Also quite interesting to see how few cards were printed throughout 4th through 7th gen.

Can’t speak to the print numbers, but the PSA 10 pop of Champion’s Path rainbow zard (6820) alone is comparable to the total pop of every English EX (5846) and gold star (2199 - 736 of which is from the dogs) combined. I think it’s also safe to assume that the pop for the zard is going to continue growing much faster than the EX era cards from here. The lower pull rates/secret rare dilution is a drop in the bucket compared to the massive increase in product being produced, opened, and preserved/graded.

Just like they did with 80s/90s sports cards and comic books, adult collectors have ensured that modern-era cards will have no enduring value. It doesn’t matter how amazing the new sets are – they have no organic collectability and never will.

Imagine this alternate timeline: back in 2003/04, hundreds of thousands of adult collectors opened packs en masse, perfectly preserved their pulls, and hoarded then-modern sealed product.

The ultimate result of this? It should be obvious: the adults who opened that product would have little to no nostalgic attachment to those cards years later (nostalgic attachment is formed near-exclusively during childhood/early adolescence). EX Series cards would be nearly worthless today, sealed EX Series boxes would be dirt cheap, and there would be no chase for collectors. The nostalgic demand for the cards (from those who were children at the time of their release) would be eternally dwarfed by the massive supply that was fueled by demand from adult collectors.I think the parallel I’m making will be totally clear to any reasonable person . Honestly, the fact that some people don’t see the way this is going to turn out is shocking to me. History repeats itself, and it will again here.