Interesting Info Regarding Topps Production Data for 1972 & 1978 Baseball

grote15

I came across this site as I was doing some research on line and it contains some interesting data regarding production numbers for both 1972 Topps and 1978 Topps baseball cards, as well as info about unopened product in general. In 1978, Topps reported a total of 9.2M in sales of Topps baseball packs alone. In 1972, Topps produced an estimated total of 20M baseball packs, or roughly 833,333 wax boxes. Lots of other interesting info and obscure details also available on this site with regard to baseball card design and production.



1978 Topps baseball packs


1972 Topps Baseball Production

bigdcards

I know the focus of our interest here is production numbers, but I also noticed this:

" Specific grades however do not consistently pull higher prices (for example a 7.5 may sell higher than an 8.5, etc). This suggests that the market generally values authentication more highly than grading."

I don't think many people trust the grades. We just want to see the authenticated pack and judge the condition ourselves. For this reason I suspect it would makes sense for someone (PSA, GAI, Steve, BGS) to cut out the grading entirely and move to an authentication model. I don't know the details of business, but I can't help but think that would lower costs enough to pass significant savings on to the submitter and increase the margin at the same time. At the moment the PSA submitters pay for both authenticating and grading services, shipping, as well as the second shipping round trip from PSA to Steve.

esquiresports

Interesting data. Thanks! Those numbers seem to generally track with the amount of 1972 unopened coming up for sale versus 1978.

I would guess that probably less then 0.1% or 0.001 of the 1972 boxes produced remain unopened today, with 1978 not significantly higher than that.

70ToppsFanatic

<< <i>Interesting data. Thanks! Those numbers seem to generally track with the amount of 1972 unopened coming up for sale versus 1978.

I would guess that probably less then 0.1% or 0.001 of the 1972 boxes produced remain unopened today, with 1978 not significantly higher than that. >>



If that esimate were accurate, and using Tim's figure from above, that would mean you estimate that there are over 800 1972 wax boxes still unopened today.
That's probably not even close, given the scarecity of supply we see in the market. It also does not take into account the series of those boxes.

Pragmatically speaking based on what has been available in the market in the past decade, I'd guess that if there are even 100 left (over all series) it would
be a bit of a longshot.

For 1978, they used to be easy to come by but they too have mostly dried up. There are probably still a few hundred of these out there (as people started
putting them away later in the 70s), but if their numbers were truly in the thousands we'd be seeing many more available on the market now IMO.

esquiresports

My estimate was less then 0.1%. I thought the number was higher than 0.01% and so I just rounded up. My best guess would be maybe a couple hundred boxes of 1972 across all series that are in collections. I think just from the people on this forum we could account for at least a dozen. There may be some tucked away in attics, etc. I wouldn't be surprised if there are still around 800 boxes of 1978 Topps remaining.

I guess at this point there are fewer boxes of 1971 than there are Honus Wagner T206s. That's pretty cool.