I looked at "completed" auctions on ebay. People are still buying common sets and the prices seem high? I mean a set like this going for $7-10? I guess it seems high to me, I see a lot of these sets on ebay.
I find it interesting and chase sets are not going for much more even though they are "rarer", like complete sets of silver cards.
I've been collecting these for a while now. I still need one of the box topper 4-card panel foils, and most of the autographed cards. The autograph cards and sketch cards are very tough to find. I beleive some of the box topper 4-card panels are also short printed also.
Dan
Posts: 229 | Location: Saint Johnsbury, Vermont, USA | Registered: October 04, 2003
Originally posted by tiggerhouse: I've been collecting these for a while now. I still need one of the box topper 4-card panel foils, and most of the autographed cards. The autograph cards and sketch cards are very tough to find. I beleive some of the box topper 4-card panels are also short printed also.
Dan
I agree with your speculation about short-prints, but the numbers for this series have "impressed" me. Perhaps they didn't print and distribute as many of the boxes/packs as they intended, or we'd be seeing even more of them.
Math: There were supposed to be 2400 each of the box-topper panels = 60,000 boxes. That would mean 500 sketches, not unreasonable but high for the time period, and 5400 autographs.
Still that's a lot of retail boxes with packs, and Active Marketing didn't make many card series (Hustler mainly, plus James Dean and this one) and probably didn't have the most mature distribution network. Sure, this was at the peak of the retail card market, but I wonder if half of the cards ever made it into collector hands. With the boxed sets, we're talking about 340,000 base sets possible ...
Posts: 2424 | Location: North Augusta, SC, USA | Registered: November 28, 2002
I think you mean 5,000 autographed cards? 100 of each card in the 50 card set were autographed.
I don't know what to say about the 60,000 boxes, etc. All I know is back then the production numbers were huge. I mean 64,000 numbered boxes for Jeffrey Jones.
Originally posted by dpolis: I think you mean 5,000 autographed cards? 100 of each card in the 50 card set were autographed.
5400 comes just from the ratio to the box-topper numbers. Agreed that 100*50 autos were announced, though 10% extra of inserts made (versus the number advertised) isn't unusual. Using 5000 autos at 1:400 packs says 55,556 boxes and you get an "overage" for the box-toppers.
Think of the Writer's Cramp after the signing party!
Posts: 2424 | Location: North Augusta, SC, USA | Registered: November 28, 2002
