The real print run of 1993 Finest Refractors

[priestc]

The general consensus you see everywhere is 241 copies of each card. You see this printed everywhere. If you look at the population reports:

http://www.psacard.com/Pop/Detail.aspx?c=36295
http://www.beckett.com/grading/set_match/4024441

Look at Frank Thomas: 252 graded by PSA, 23 graded by Beckett, plus all the cards still ungraded. If you search for "1993 finest refractor frank thomas" you'll see two graded and two ungraded for sale. Looking at completed listings I see roughly the same ratio. Therefore its reasonable to assume half of all copies in hobby hands are ungraded. That puts the estimated print run to be about 500 cards each. I guess Frank Thomas could have been double printed, but many other players have more than 100 PSA graded examples. Thats almost half of all printed examples. How likely is that? That seems awfully high to me.

As far as I can tell, topps never officially confirmed the 241 number, its just the number that gets copied around. I guess it doesn't really make a difference, considering 500 is still pretty scarce...

[savedfrommyspokes]

The population report for the graded cards could include cards that were cracked out and subsequently resubmitted seeking a bump while the original flip was not returned for removal from the population reports.

[glynparson]

Can be high due to breakouts particularly on a card where one grade can make it considerably more valuable.

[Rich Klein]

Also -- the refractors were NOT noted as such and it can be difficult to telll if a card is a reftractor or not. I know some peoiple can tell the difference but not all of us.

So, I'd be willing to wager that some of the graded "refractor" cards are just base cards which could appar to be refractors

Topps occasionally still does not label refractors to this very day (2015 Topps Chrome BB) and there were many collectors who did not recognize cards they had as refractors or might have thought base cards were refractors. I wrote about that and even saw plenty of on-line posts with the same issues.

Nothing new 22 years later. Sometimes the same issues keep popping up

Rich

[PhilG]

Newsgroups: rec.collecting.cards.discuss Mar 14 2000, 3:00 am
From: "Andy Kimball" <cardd...@go.com> - Find messages by this author
Date: 2000/03/14
Subject: Re: should I open up 1993 finest baseball box??
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Actually, I'm almost positive the odds were 1 in 15 packs.
I remember reading it somewhere (probably the Topps Press release - they
sent out 2 press releases about a month apart - the first was for a 198 card
set (no Piazza) and the second was to inform dealers of their inclusion of
Rookie Superstar Mike Piazza) plus we opened 24 boxes of '93 Finest and it
seemed every fifth box had 2 refractors the rest had 1 -- we got 30
refractors out of 24 boxes, the best of them was Don Mattingly & George
Brett.
-- Andy

My Web Site (http://www.93finestrefractors.com)

[ls7plus]

Can be high due to breakouts particularly on a card where one grade can make it considerably more valuable.

A very good point, and Glyn may well be right on, but it just seems like a lot of breakouts and re-submissions to me. I remember when the new Beckett came out not too long after this set was issued and had a complete set valued at $100K--a bunch of us just about fainted! I do know that trying to find the McGwire (I still like the guy, for all the joy he brought to baseball) on ebay is not a difficult task, but then again, PSA has graded about 260 McGwire rookies gem mint 10, and you will see about one per month come out, on average. Prices for the rookie in gem mint have been rising--I think the younger generations remember the joy and could care less about the juice--they're generally going in the $600 range now, but PWCC sold one recently for $999. It wasn't that long ago that a "10" '85 McGwire was a $300 card. Of course, it was $5,000 in 1998, with those that owned one vowing never to sell it! Comeback in the making!

Highest regards,

Larry

[yanksfan09]

I'd guess with high condition high dollar cards , some examples probably can get resubmitted and crossed over more than half a dozen times.