I agree with Rich's note on 1981-86 being added to the over-production years. The "guessed at" number for pre-81 would mean that the mushroom happened in 1981.
While Rich won't like this, the explosion and over-production began with Rickey Henderson and the monthly Beckett introduction. At that point the manufacurers knew they had a good thing going and we will never know how many of these cards were printed.
In 1991 I had a part owner of one of the big three come into our wholesale warehouse to ask me if I wanted cases of past years cards going back to 1981. If I bought "x" number of cases he promised me several cases from an other sport that happened to have a rather hot rookie card from 1986/87. His inference was that they had stockpiled tons of them.
My partner has always maintained that anything that could be printed over and over again perhaps even today could not be worth anything. With what we know about some of the folks running the card companies during this era I think it is possible that anything and everything went on during the boom years.
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