How much vintage is out there!?

[rats60]

Originally Posted by toppcat

From the late 50's through the mid-70's Topps would state in various articles/interviews, etc., that 250,000 of each baseball card was produced. As for the accuracy of that, I think they just repeated the same press release or comment for 15 years. It may also just have referred to packs sold in stores, or, it was a made up figure.

I've tried to suss out production for a few sets but it's an inexact science and compounded (confounded) by Card Collectors Company getting what I estimate to be as much as 3-5% of the annual print run directly from Topps.

So with cards issued series by series, the 250K figure is meaningless unless it's an average. And if it's an average it's still mostly meaningless as we don't know comparative series amounts.

Topps also hit peak baseball card production (for the pre-1981 days) in 1959 IIRC which makes sense as I think the number of children as a % of overall population in the US peaked in 1959. Baby boom indeed!

Personally, I think they were producing more cards than they ever let on. This links to an estimate I did for 1952 Baseball production and also shows the FTC info Al references. I think they were making more than 250,000 of each lower series card in 1952 alone and they sold more than that from 1953-55 and then once 1956 rolled around they vastly increased their output. I doubt the true production figures will never be known until the time that the MLBPA got Marvin Miller involved (1968-69).

https://www.thetoppsarchives.com/202...bers-game.html

I think the expansion of baseball west also inflated those numbers. I grew up in the Los Angeles area. When my brother and I were buying collections in the late 60s-early 70s, we got lots of cards from 1958-1968, but few from 1951-1957. I don't think Topps shipped much west before 1958. With the Dodgers and Giants in California, that opened up a large market for Topps.