Production Estimates / Print Run Archive

[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.

Maybe someone else can estimate the market share of each sport in 1990. But say Topps printed 1/4 of the 81 billion trading cards printed. That's 20 billion trading cards in 1990. Let's then say that the breakdown was 40% baseball cards, 25% football and 25% hockey and 10% non-sports. That's 8 billion baseball cards. Say Topps base was 80% of that. 6.6 billion cards of a 792 card set would be a print run of 8.3 million of each card. Personally I feel that is a conservative estimate and wouldn't be surprised if the print run of each base card of 1990 Topps baseball was 15 million.

Looking at the current unopened market, it does appear to me that 1990 Topps is at least 2-3 times more plentiful than 1989 Upper Deck.