Quote:
Originally Posted by West
I would like to address the years 1989 Upper Deck base and 1990 Topps base. I have done some research into the printing of 1990 Topps. Also, Pete Williams' "Card Sharks" gave readers an unprecedented look behind the scenes of the production of 1989 Upper Deck. According to the book, the initial release of 1989 Upper Deck was for around 125,000 cases. That's 1.4 billion cards. That's around 2 million of each card in the 700 card first series. Now we know they couldn't keep up with demand and continued printing. For argument's sake, let's say they doubled the initial print run and made 4 million of each card (2.8 billion total cards printed). One source inside the industry claimed that 81 billion trading cards were printed by the late '80s and early 90's.
|
I once had a 1989 Baseball Cards magazine issue years ago that had a two page Upper Deck ad (I've never seen it since anywhere on the Internet) showing a cartoon of a card store with three kids enjoying their 1989 Upper Deck cards while two others are sitting on the curb sad because they missed out. The ad said there'd only be enough cards made for three out of five baseball card collectors (however many they thought there were) to have a set. And promised that future years more would be produced. And in the Beckett/Sport Americana annual price guide it said the original idea was to have one million of each card but apparently they decided to double that number so soon?
I'd love to read that book if it ever shows up on the Internet Archive...