How many boxes of ____ produced?

[BrokenBat89]

Do the companies release the numbers of how many Hobby, Factory Set, or Blaster Boxes were produced? I remember seeing a serial number on a case break video. I figure this would be a very important # when discerning the value of a product.

Thanks.

 

[valediction]

Do the companies release the numbers of how many Hobby, Factory Set, or Blaster Boxes were produced? I remember seeing a serial number on a case break video. I figure this would be a very important # when discerning the value of a product.

Thanks.

Rarely. A few tried that tactic in the later 90's to early 2000's (Score Select was the first to come to mind, there were others too, often fringe issues like Star Pics, etc). It could be important, but there are a lot of other variables in play too. No matter how limited it is, if there is less demand than supply, value is going to be relatively low. Signature Rookies in the mid 1990's was a good example, they had numbered boxes and cases, an autographed card in every pack, focused on draft picks with Joe DiMaggio and Griffey Jr autos in there as well, and realistically, aside from the Griffey, Nolan Ryan, and DiMaggio, most of the products are pretty limited demand. I lost out on a seald box in the $30 range, not sure how much higher he would have gone, but when almost every auto in the set books at $2, I wasn't going any higher. All things being equal, the known limited print run would increase demand, but all things are almost never equal

 

[mintman2]

Lots of companies still do it but not the big names as far as I know and usually it's how many cases were produced which of course you can quickly figure the box count. And no, I haven't noticed any increase in valuebased purely on how many boxes were produced.

 

[jwj20]

You can reverse the number from the serial numbered cards. For example, to keep it simple, say only hobby boxes are sold. Within this group, there is a set of 50 cards, each numbered to 100 and say are inserted with pack odds 1:1000. For this hobby box, say there are 25 packs per box.

Then the math goes like this: 50 cards * 100 repeats = 5000 cards for the group.

Each card has 999 packs made for the one it is in, so 1000 packs * 5000 cards = 5000000 packs made.

Now, 25 packs per box means there are 5,000,000 / 25 = 20,000 boxes made.


The challenge in real life is that there are HTA, Hobby, Blaster, Rack, Target Bin, Wal-Mart bin and possibly other types. But they all have odds listed on them. I actually look at the odds and make sure the odds per card (break it down from pack to number of cards within the pack) remains the same between the different types of boxes. Sadly, it's not.