I will award a sealed base unlimited booster box to anyone who can undeniably prove they had the closest guess.
My own guess when asked this question a while ago on sets like fossil and jungle was in the 5-15k range. After giving it some more thought I think that number would be more appropriate for base set including all languages and editions. I think Jungle unl+1st and Fossil unl+1st would each be somewhere more in the 1-10k realm just to get an order of magnitude estimation.
One bit of data we do get fed is the total number of cards printed updated on a semi annual basis. Last couple check-ins have shown we are currently having about 3.2B cards printed per year. With 4-5 sets printed each year that averages out to about 800M cards per set and if the only product released was booster boxes would be about 2.2M booster boxes for each set.
It’s a fun thing to think about and it is interesting to read all the guesses. It becomes crazy to think about when you multiple them by current market value to come up with an estimated market cap and when you run a little thought experiment on how many will be opened over the next 1, 10, 50, 100 years and what will happen to the pops.
It is also crazy to think about how many boxes are sealed out there in landfills, in attics, in storage that have been or will be lost to time never to enter the market nor be opened. Do we count those in our estimates? What percent do those comprise? The whole story of 1952 Topps being dumped in an ocean is a fun google if you’ve never heard of it, and I’m not saying Pokemon saw anything like that but in the ~10 year span of the early 2000’s and more and more every day I’m sure most would be shocked how many mint collections and sealed boxes still get trashed with people having no idea of their worth or that they still have them after all these years.