Topps Production Run in the 1970's

ClockworkAngel

I have seen a few threads bringing up production runs and what is considered scarce and in short supply.....and when topps really stepped up production.

My feeling is that there is a rather large difference between 1977 and 1978 Baseball in terms of finding unopened material or even high grade cards. I have always had a very difficult time finding unopened material from 1977 and earlier-and in particular 1977 Topps seems to be much more difficult to find than even 1975 or 1976.

I'd be curious to hear from some of the experts on this...if they've noticed the same thing regarding 1977 Topps, and if they have noticed that 1978 was the year they stepped up production

ColleSystem

Just an observation... Topps did make a lot of 1977 star wars cards. It would be interesting to see if they had to curtail production of 1977 football and baseball to accomodate. It would be interesting to understand just how often the presses had to be running to crank out said amount of cards. It may not have been an issue, perhaps they had plenty of time. I do know from a topps flyer that they made over 100,000,000 star wars cards and stickers from the first movie.

cpamike

I actually think 1976 unopened baseball is harder to come by than 1977 (for me anyway), but there is much more 1975 unopened available. From 1978 baseball on, there is much more unopened product around as more people started putting aside boxes and cases.

grote15

<< <i>I actually think 1976 unopened baseball is harder to come by than 1977 (for me anyway), but there is much more 1975 unopened available. From 1978 baseball on, there is much more unopened product around as more people started putting aside boxes and cases. >>



Agree with Mike's assessment. 75 was/is a popular set so that probably explains why it seems 75 packs are so much more plentiful than 76.

Albertdidit

<< <i>Just an observation... Topps did make a lot of 1977 star wars cards. It would be interesting to see if they had to curtail production of 1977 football and baseball to accomodate. It would be interesting to understand just how often the presses had to be running to crank out said amount of cards. It may not have been an issue, perhaps they had plenty of time. I do know from a topps flyer that they made over 100,000,000 star wars cards and stickers from the first movie. >>



Oh my goodness am i reading this right? Over 100 Million star wars from 1st movie??? wow

Dpeck100

100,000,000 million is this a typo???

I can't imagine what that number looks like for 1991 Topps or a similar set.

Albertdidit

Maybe meant 10 million?

Dpeck100

Too funny we typed basically the same thing at the same time. LOL

Maurice

100 million doesn't surprise me. If anything, I would have thought that number would be much higher. In 1977, kids still played with cards and the Star Wars movie was huge.

Dpeck100

I just checked the pop reports and there are only 3 PSA 10's of Luke Skywalker.

With the potential of being over 30,000 per card printed this seems pretty rare to me.

lostdart58

2,000,000 kids each having 50 cards = 100,000,000 cards:

Seems reasonable to me.

Maurice

<< <i>2,000,000 kids each having 50 cards = 100,000,000 cards:

Seems reasonable to me. >>



That's why I would think the # would be much higher. With the popularity of Star Wars in 1977, I think a lot more than 2 million kids would have had Star Wars cards.

Albertdidit

Maybe they made 100,000,000 of each card

cellos

I'm pretty sure that the first star wars movie had cards distributed in 5 different series so 100,000,000 seems about right across all 5 series. My guess would be that series 1 probably had the least amount produced of the 5 series.

ldferg

<< <i>I just checked the pop reports and there are only 3 PSA 10's of Luke Skywalker.

With the potential of being over 30,000 per card printed this seems pretty rare to me. >>



We may need to do a group rip of star wars. I'd be up for a box of 77s. Darth Vader

ColleSystem

I stand corrected, the flyer states that they sold more than 100,000,000 retail packages. See link below for the flyer. The flyer is advertising the upcoming ESB movie cards. I think there were 7 cards and 1 sticker per pack in the original movie cards, though the flyer states that the ESB will have 12 cards per pack. I would guess that since it states "retail packages" that would not include the vending boxes. However, those are not plenitful (I have only seen vending material from series 2).

LINK