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1993 SP vs. 2015 Tek

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mouschi

Featured Contributor, Bridging the Gap, Senior Mem
May 18, 2012
3,105
170
What a difference 22 years makes, huh? 1993 was the tail end of the junk wax era. Card companies started slowing down the presses, and collectors started to find some premium cards were not as readily available as the typical 50 cent packs offered at grocery stores.

While some cards from the late 80's and early 90's were produced in mass quantities to the tune of millions ... PER CARD, some were not. 1993 SP, for example. A beautiful set highly sought after - even to this day by collectors, and namely due to Derek Jeter's rookie. The 1993 SP Foil rookie of Jeter remains among the top rookies to have for this time period, and in recent years, has even seen a price increase. Heck, for a gem mint copy of one, you can expect to shell out several thousand dollars for one - that is, if you can find a copy this perfect. I was lucky to find one in a display holder at a garage sale for $1 - it doesn't get much better than that!

jeter.jpg


The collecting landscape is FAR different in 2015. The collecting community is far smaller, but on average, each collector is shelling out far more money for must haves in their collections. Let's face it - had card manufacturers continued to only put out 50 cent packs like they were doing 25 years ago, the card companies would have collapsed long ago.

Enter: 2015 Topps Tek. Boxes are in the $70-80 range, and each box holds ... 1 pack. Yes, 1 pack - holding 8 cards. They are cool, shiny and clear - but they don't pass the Back to the Future test.

great-scott.jpg


Well, at least he got the price right! The 3d hologram pop outs? Not so much.

After a forum member named [MENTION=6581]BBCgalaxee[/MENTION] mentioned something from an older publication. In 1994, a magazine named Sports Look, Upper Deck responded to rumors about there being a 6,000 case print run of 1993 SP. A rep responded saying that was a bit low, but it was close.

So, what does that mean? The set has 290 cards, and an insert set of about 20 cards. For easy math, let's just say there are 300 cards in the set. There are 12 cards per pack, 24 cards per box and 18 cards per case. That means that there are about 5,184 cards in each case or, over 31 million 1993 SP cards out there. That would mean that there are over 100,000 of each card that was printed. If the foil rookies are not short printed, does that mean that the beloved 1993 SP Jeter foil has over 100,000 copies out there?

And this, my friends, is from a card that had a limited print run!

Now, let's take a look at 2015 Tek. I heard that Topps had bumped up the case run to 2,500 cases this year. That is about 25% of the run that 1993 SP had, right? Sit tight a sec fefore you go running to grab every single serial numbered card you can find.

Sure, the case run may be 2,500 - however, there are not 18 boxes per case like SP. There are 12. And instead of 12 cards per pack, there are 8. As mentioned above, instead of 24 packs per box ... there is one. At 96 cards per case, we are looking at 240,000 cards made. There are 100 cards in the set, so aside from inserts, you are probably looking at about 2,400 of each card made. As you probably already know, Topps made things a lot more interesting by offering up multiple variations of each. My Canseco checklist shows 23 different variations. 274 are accounted for being serial numbered over 12 of these variations, and there are varying rarities for the remaining 11, but being a numbers guy, this exercise was extremely interesting to me. (If only my math teacher used problems involving baseball cards, I'd probably have done a lot better in school!)

So, what it looks like is this:

The print run PER CARD for 1993 SP would need OVER TWENTY of these 5,000 count monster boxes to store them all.

61Y19pMmn6L._SX355_.jpg


Imagine all these boxes being FILLED with 1993 SP Jeter Foil cards!

20boxes.jpg


Whereas the print run per card of 2015 Tek would just need 3 of these 800 count boxes to store them all in:

img_0137.jpg


So, each card would only need these to store the entire print run of each card (well ... that is, if they weren't so thick.)

3boxes.jpg


And within each of these boxes, you could find 23 different variations of each card.

To me, the 1993 SP numbers are shocking. With over 100,000 1993 SP Jeter cards out there, how is the price staying so high? I guess it goes to show you how many collectors there truly are out there ... and how many cards out there that they can be mixed in with.

The 2015 Tek numbers are a little bit surprising too, though to be honest. It looks like some of the more common variations may have 500-1,000 of each. I expected the numbers to be lower as well on these.

I'll admit that in writing all of this, I am using hearsay, generalizations and assumptions, but it looks like these figures could be used as nice ballpark estimates.
 

RStadlerASU22

Active member
Jan 2, 2013
8,881
11
Way to break it down and yeah , SP in 1993 is much different than SP in 2015. I wish we had a middle of the road where there were more collectors remaining and prices on product could come down etc. Good luck on the JC search, I wish Will was in Tek ;)

Ryan
 

predatorkj

Active member
Aug 7, 2008
11,871
2
Prices will never come back down and we have ourselves to blame. Topps and the others are a machine and when something works, they do it to death and focus on it only.

The only exception is, they've actually figured out a way to keep pack prices up while slowly removing themselves from the real GU front. Now everything is "event worn"...
 

mrmopar

Member
Jan 19, 2010
6,187
4,093
This is a case, much like the NNOF Thomas which was just referenced in another thread I was reading, where the demand is "controller" by the hype that remains. I will toss in newer hot prospect autographs here as well, Puig in particular, that have no business being so expensive, yet they remain that way, even after the player had several less than stellar seasons under his belt.

There very well may be 100K 93 Jeter cards, most of them being damn near mint too, but nobody is giving them away. If someone with a decent quantity started doling them out for next to nothing, the market could crash. Not going to happen, but it could given the right circumstances.

It helps that rookie cards are so revered and in this case, the NNOF, Jeter, the UD Griffey, etc. All are iconic modern RCs and seem to most, relatively low print runs in comparison to the masses in the same era (except Thomas).

Arod SPs from the following year would probably be in the same boat as they once were if he was not tainted in the collecting world. You can find bargains on that card nowadays, but it was severely hot back in the day.
 

mouschi

Featured Contributor, Bridging the Gap, Senior Mem
May 18, 2012
3,105
170
All very good points!
 

smapdi

Well-known member
Aug 7, 2008
4,397
221
Consider the print runs of 1992 Topps and Upper Deck were over 100,000 20-box cases, excluding jumbos, rak packs, etc, and you've got an idea how limited SP was at the time.
 

mouschi

Featured Contributor, Bridging the Gap, Senior Mem
May 18, 2012
3,105
170
Consider the print runs of 1992 Topps and Upper Deck were over 100,000 20-box cases, excluding jumbos, rak packs, etc, and you've got an idea how limited SP was at the time.

In a previous article I had written, I covered that some of the junk wax era cards sometimes had print runs in the millions ... per card. Crazy, huh?
 

mouschi

Featured Contributor, Bridging the Gap, Senior Mem
May 18, 2012
3,105
170
UD made 7200 cases of '93 SP

Wow, that makes this even more incredibly ... jeesh, where the heck are all these Jeters?! I think we should all band together as collectors and make a catalog of print runs and such, at some point.
 

predatorkj

Active member
Aug 7, 2008
11,871
2
I'd like to point something out...

The fact that a card, any card really, has any particular print run, does not necessarily indicate its value. I think with the Jeter, it's his most desirable. Couple that with his popularity, the grading aspect of our hobby where people pay crazy money for a third party grade, and you've got some decent money for a card that's not really all that rare.

There are several cards nowadays that aren't a big deal and yet their print run is small. So whether it's a base card from 91 topps(like 3 million per) or a base card from 08 triple threads (/1499 or something), the card has to be desirable. Besides, with Bowman, everyone wanting autos, and the gu market, it's hard for a base card to be worth anything any more. And there has to be a demand for the older stuff before prices were to increase. So with junk wax, it's not necessarily the quantity as much as it's just the fact that few of the issues are hard to find in high grade and there is no new demand. Basically the people wanting these cards probably already have them.

To be honest, if you really like and collect baseball cards, by now you've probably already got the Jeter sp. Or you've been lazy or you're one of those collectors who just buys what's hot and just recently woke up and purchased one way late.
 

mouschi

Featured Contributor, Bridging the Gap, Senior Mem
May 18, 2012
3,105
170
I'd like to point something out...

The fact that a card, any card really, has any particular print run, does not necessarily indicate its value. I think with the Jeter, it's his most desirable. Couple that with his popularity, the grading aspect of our hobby where people pay crazy money for a third party grade, and you've got some decent money for a card that's not really all that rare.

There are several cards nowadays that aren't a big deal and yet their print run is small. So whether it's a base card from 91 topps(like 3 million per) or a base card from 08 triple threads (/1499 or something), the card has to be desirable. Besides, with Bowman, everyone wanting autos, and the gu market, it's hard for a base card to be worth anything any more. And there has to be a demand for the older stuff before prices were to increase. So with junk wax, it's not necessarily the quantity as much as it's just the fact that few of the issues are hard to find in high grade and there is no new demand. Basically the people wanting these cards probably already have them.

To be honest, if you really like and collect baseball cards, by now you've probably already got the Jeter sp. Or you've been lazy or you're one of those collectors who just buys what's hot and just recently woke up and purchased one way late.

All good points, however I am surprised how little the alleged print run of the Jeter seemingly affects its value. I wonder how many collectors there are out there, too. If just 1 percent of America collected, that would mean there are 3,000,000 collectors. Are there that many? Fewer? More? I sure would love to know. I wouldn't think there were nearly that many. Heck, perhaps that number is 1/10th of a percent @ 300,000.
 
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Topnotchsy

Featured Contributor, The best players in history?
Aug 7, 2008
9,446
168
Really interesting and thought out post. Nice job running the numbers.

As you indicate, supply is only one half of the supply/demand equation that determines price. The lack of internet definitely contributed to the perceived scarcity that existed, and so many bought cards rabidly fueled by the widespread belief that the cards would provide a retirement fund. Times have changed, and the hobby is a lot smaller, but it still moves forward.
 

BBCgalaxee

Well-known member
Sep 9, 2011
6,475
59
For years I've written down production numbers listed in hobby magazines from the past.

Some of these were guesstimates, while others were from the companies.

85 topps: 800k of each card
87 topps: 1m of each card
91 topps: 4m of each card
91 score: about 3m of each card

93 leaf update 5871 CASES
94 & 95 donruss 350k boxes ea series

94 flair series two 10k boxes

Anyone remember those 82 KMart anniversary topps sets? These might have been the first hobby hoarded product ever and went from hot to super blow out mass produced in a short time.

Each of the two thousand stores got either 1152 or 576 sets each order.


Sent from my HTCONE using Freedom Card Board mobile app
 

mouschi

Featured Contributor, Bridging the Gap, Senior Mem
May 18, 2012
3,105
170
For years I've written down production numbers listed in hobby magazines from the past.

Some of these were guesstimates, while others were from the companies.

85 topps: 800k of each card
87 topps: 1m of each card
91 topps: 4m of each card
91 score: about 3m of each card

93 leaf update 5871 CASES
94 & 95 donruss 350k boxes ea series

94 flair series two 10k boxes

Anyone remember those 82 KMart anniversary topps sets? These might have been the first hobby hoarded product ever and went from hot to super blow out mass produced in a short time.

Each of the two thousand stores got either 1152 or 576 sets each order.


Sent from my HTCONE using Freedom Card Board mobile app

There goes my plan for collecting every single 1987 Topps Canseco ever! This truly is fascinating stuff to me. To think that there are 800,000 1985 Topps McGwire, Clemens and Puckett cards ... each. Wow!
 

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