You have to consider how different the market (or lack thereof) was at the time. It was a card game for kids that had massively declined in popularity from the initial WOTC sets, not a speculative fervor of “SHOULD YOU INVEST IN EX DEOXYS?” videos (hell, YouTube had just started in the middle of the EX era). Print supply was low because demand was low, and the demand for graded cards in particular was microscopic compared to what it is today.
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Yea, it’s obvious for me know seeing print numbers and noticing how harder it can be to find cards from the 2nd or 3rd gen in mint condition, but back then when those sets were new, I was just a kid collecting. And most other kids in my classes were also collecting and trading so the tcg really did seem plenty popular to me back at the time 
Are you from Europe? Because from what I understand, the TCG popularity waned less heavily in Europe during Gen 3 than it did in America. This is what I’ve heard from several people on this forum, at least.
Nope, America west coast. I got into the tcg because my parents were into in the 90s and I quickly became a pokemon super fan as a small child. And most kids in my class in elementary school in the mid 2000s were into the tcg.
Interesting. I grew up on the east coast and while some people collected Pokemon cards, it was far from “most.” Yugioh seemed more popular, honestly. And once you got to middle school, it was all Magic, all the time.
This study from 2010 seems to corroborate that feeling.
docshare01.docshare.tips/files/20620/206206901.pdf
As a bonus there is a revenue table based on total aggregate US TCG sales by the Magazine ICV2 cited that gives figures for US sales 2002-2008. with Yugi-oh driving 2003-2004 and Bakugan 2008.
2002- £750m; 2003- £850m; 2004-$700m; 2005-$475m; 2006- $550m; 2007- $600m; 2008-$800m
Have we had any luck with this?
There’s a blurb here from the press release via Pokebeach with a 22 billion number, don’t know if that’s a mistake - as pointed out by Pokebeach themselves - or if the previous number was. Not sure whether the video game and Pokemon Go numbers have changed.
It is one of the most successful video game franchises of all time with more than 368 million video games sold worldwide. In addition, more than 22 billion Pokémon TCG cards have been shipped to 77 countries in 13 languages, while the mobile game sensation Pokémon GO has received more than one billion downloads globally since launch in 2016. More than 1000 episodes of the animated TV series span 24 seasons, licensed for broadcast in 176 countries and regions in more than 30 languages.
*Source: The NPD Group / Toys / Retail Tracking Service / EU8
**UK, France, Belgium, Netherlands, Italy, Germany, Spain & Russia
Let me link their previous post:
www.pokebeach.com/2021/06/pokemon-tcg-sold-3-7-billion-cards-during-pandemic
He does a breakdown of previous corporate releases in it and some analysis.
*Here’s the amount of cards the The Pokemon Company claims they’ve shipped:
March 2021: Over 34.1 billion cards worldwide in 13 languages and 77 areas
March 2020: Over 30.4 billion cards worldwide in 13 languages and 77 areas
September 2019: Over 28.8 billion cards worldwide in 13 languages and 77 areas
March 2019: Over 27.2 billion cards worldwide in 12 languages and 77 countries and regions
March 2018: Over 25.7 billion cards worldwide in 11 languages and 74 countries and regions
March 2017: Over 23.6 billion cards worldwide in 11 languages and 74 countries and regions
Between 2014 and 2016: Over 21.5 billion cards worldwide in 10 languages and 74 countries and regions
Between 2004 and 2010: Over 14 billion cards worldwide in 30-40 countries*
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Have been sifting through the archives lately for an unrelated project and found this press release from Pokemon USA Inc. in January 2005;
Toward the bottom they talk about the current state of Pokemon as a brand and share that they’ve surpassed global sales of over 13 billion cards. You probably uncovered that info a long time ago, @gottaketchumall, but I thought it was interesting enough to bump!
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Went through some press releases in my email…
April 2019 to May 2019: “available in 11 languages with more than 25.7 billion cards purchased”
January 2019: “shipped more than 23.6 billion cards to date”
October 2015 to January 2016: “21.5 billion Pokémon Trading Card Game cards shipped globally”
June 2013 to March 2014: “over 20 billion cards shipped to date”
March 2006: “more than 14 billion Pokémon Trading Card Game cards in circulation”
And while no number, it’s interesting anyways: through August 2019, “77 countries and regions in 13 languages”
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If the Feb/May set in 2019 had 2.1b printed (less due to other reprints probably) how much of the highest rarity card would there be in existence?
Really want to know how rare some of these cards actually are.
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Astral Radiance is out. There’s a TCG Player article, but the graphic is so egregiously misleading.
Is 250m cards printed for a set considered a small amount or a large one?
If 1b cards are printed each year over 4 sets, it’s 250m cards.
I guess it’s way more than the EX/DP era but would still be a lot smaller than the original WOTC?
I’m trying to estimate the rarity of the cards in each set.
For example, using data compiled in the “modern pull rates” thread, if 250m cards of Cosmic Eclipse were printed, then this would be the amount of each card in each rarity:
V: 186,889
FA: 34,074
RR: 26,859
Gold: 24,889
CHR: 211,392
Are those high or low amounts?
edit: altogether they total 7m so 243m cards are of holo rare or lower rarity.
Pokemon prints way more than 1b cards per year now. They distributed 3.7b between March 2020 and March 2021, for instance. So rather than 250m cards per set, you’re looking at more like 1b cards per set.
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If that is the case, then there would be potentially 195,000 of each FA/AA in Brilliant Stars and 170,000 of each RR.
Even for a Pokemon as popular as Charizard, if there were 195,000 in existence…it really shouldn’t be a $190 card.
Maybe I’m underestimating the number of people who buy cards. After all, there are 1.65m people who follow Leonhart and 2.51m people who follow Unlisted Leaf.
195,000 is an even larger number when you consider how extremely low the attrition is now. 195,000 today is comparable to a 5,000,000 print run from 20 years ago lol. If 5,000,000 of a given card was printed in 2002, there may only be 150,000 copies of that card still in mint condition in 2022. Whereas if 195,000 of a given card was printed in 2022, you can be damned sure there will be still be 150,000 copies in mint condition in 2042. So 195,000 is an even larger number when you take into account just how much of that print run will be perfectly preserved. I’m using arbitrary figures here for the sake of demonstration, but it’s pretty clear that the attrition rate is but a minute fraction of what it was during WotC/EX.
tl;dr: low attrition rates mean that a 195,000 card print run from 2022 is particularly gigantic when compared to the print runs of older cards.
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www.pokeguardian.com/934991_over-9-billion-pokemon-cards-sold-in-fiscal-year-2021-2022
9.2b cards sold worldwide in 1 year.
Wonder how many printed - not just the 5 English sets, since it probably includes the previous SWSH era and also all the Japanese sets.
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Forgive me if this has been done already and I havent seen it, but it would be cool to see a tier list of sets by estimated print run. Anyone got some spare time and knowledge lol
Just how the sets compare to each other. Not actual number of card estimates