Production Estimates / Print Run Archive

[West]

Originally Posted by JUrsaner

@West - That is what I'm talking about! Love that post - gives a lot to think about for estimates

Was that claim of 80b+ trading cards supposedly an annual figure?

It was an annual figure. I've seen it reported in several places, here is one link:

https://slate.com/culture/2010/03/th...rd-bubble.html

"Unfortunately for investors, each one of those cards was being printed in astronomical numbers. The card companies were shrewd enough never to disclose how many cards they were actually producing, but even conservative estimates put the number well into the billions. One trade magazine estimated the tally at 81 billion trading cards per year in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, or more than 300 cards for every American annually. "

I'm not sure what trade magazine the original estimate came from. Could we posit that Topps produced as much as 40% of that 81 billion? I know there was a ton of Fleer, Donruss and Score out there, but Topps had been the industry leader for decades and Upper Deck was just getting on its feet. Some kind of market share data (or an annual report, as Steve B mentioned) from that era would get a better estimate.

Since Topps became publicly traded I was able to download annual reports from as far back as 1995. But the junk wax era reports are not available as Topps was privately held at that time and employees and subcontractors all had strict non-disclosure stipulations in their contracts.