Autographed Cards Experiment. How rare is an autographed card?

Matt26

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I did some research today on how many individual Autographed cards one specific player has on the market.

I decided to choose Andrew Bogut (the Oz Cards Figurehead) for this experiment. I was curious to find out how rare an autographed Andrew Bogut card really is.

I started out with Upperdeck and was staggered to realise that he has in excess of 5000 individually signed UD cards on the market. These range from sets like Authentic Signatures through to 1 of 1 Logomen. With cards like an SP Authentic rookie numbered to 1299, this set really adds to the total.

This figure also does not include autographed cards that do not have a print run stated. Items like UD Portraits 8 x 10 photos, that do not have a print run were not included. This years Exquisite release will again add to this autograph figure.

I then moved on to Topps, who doesnt have its print runs on its website like UD has. I dont have access to a Beckett here at work, however I would at least estimate that he would have upwards of 3000 Topps autos.

Add to this overall figure the Press Pass autos and we are looking for in excess of 10,000 autographs of one particular player in his rookie season.

Thats one bad case of writers cramp!

I thought I would share this as I found it interesting to see how many autographed cards of one player have been produced.

My question is, are autographed cards overproduced?

Cheers
Matt
 
Hasn't Bogut signed exclusively to Topps?? Which should therefore mean there'd be less autos next year....maybe UD wanted to flood the Bogut market? Also there will be huge interest in any No.1 pick...so maybe this experiment is slightly flawed....we need a different player!!
 
twentysomething said:
My question is, are autographed cards overproduced?

great topic matt, simple answer would be yes, autos are flooding the market, especially rookie autos in the past few years. autos, being easily the most popular insert card, are overproduced because the demand for autos is still very high, despite the vast numbers of them out there. thus we see huge demand for superstar autos that go up to $10,000 and beyond and yet smaller players autos will go for 5c.

actually, its funny how some players autos saturate the market yet still retain a high price, like mj and bron, yet old school legends autos, whose amount of autos on the market would be very small compared to todays rookies, are going for a pittance, example, i recently picked up a gervin auto for just over $10 and a dennis johnson for $3!!! absolute legends of the game, yet some punk rookie who has yet to prove himself has autos going for hundreds of dollars.
 
Allstar cards inc said:
Hasn't Bogut signed exclusively to Topps?? Which should therefore mean there'd be less autos next year....maybe UD wanted to flood the Bogut market? Also there will be huge interest in any No.1 pick...so maybe this experiment is slightly flawed....we need a different player!!

I understand that Bogut signed with Topps before his rookie season, yet he also signed 5000+ cards for UD. This experiment could really have been any of the top 5 picks from last years draft except for Chris Paul who was UD exclusive.

I'm pretty certain that most top 5 picks of the draft from the last 2 years would have had similar amounts of cards produced to Bogut.

It would be interesting to do a similar experiment with someone like Dwyane Wade in his rookie year (he signed with both Topps and UD)

Cheers
Matt
 
For one thing, Bogut only had 750 SPx AU Jsy RCs, not 1499, so you might wanna check your totals.

Yes autographs are overproduced, but I don't think 8000 or something is that many, obviously if you sat down and signed them all in one hit it would be pretty tiring, but over the course of an entire year it's only 25 a day.
 
Bargey, thanks for that... meant to say SP Authentic, and the correct figure was 1299 anyway not 1499 which I had posted!

Cheers
Matt
 
interesting read there Matt, personally i think autos are way overproduced (along with GU cards) but if the market/interest is there from the consumer the card companies will keep producing more and more...

just my 2c :)
 
Yeah Jez I think the whole cheap legends compaired to rookies, has to do with the general collector not knowing who all these players are, where as they know who a rookie is as their is current hype over them as well as media.
I bet 25% of the members on this board not know who players like
Wes Unseld or Pete Maravich, Gail Goodrich, Hal Greer are. So you
know it's going to be universal.

I picked up a Gervin auto for $15 today as a matter of fact:D
 
Work's going pretty busy then Matt? :p

Great read, and interesting topic.

I think that it's great to have ample amounts of Autos of our Favourite players, as it makes them easier to allow more people to have that piece of "great" from them.

Totally agree with what Jizzer is saying, strange how some legends' sell for the amount of postage we pay on Rookies who are selling for $100's more! I think people these days look to invest more so than collect. Sad way to go about it, with cards, but I guess some people come out on top.

People must fork out lots of dough on these players hoping they become the next MJ, Wilt, Bird, Russell, Jabbar, etc.... - aka Lebron James.
His autos are starting to grow, in production I mean.... they are releasing more and more, instead of less and less, and yet they still sell for $350+....
 
Thanks Scotty....yeah work was busy today! :)

Its amazing how people are more than happy to risk money on what a player could be, rather than was the player actually was.

On one hand take Vlad's Moses Malone Collection, Moses was one of the best players going around at the time and had a great career, yet his autos are fairly cheap to come by.

Compare that to this years rookie class, Most Chris Paul autos go between $100 - $200 and he has only just completed his first season. He may go on to be a great player, or in cases like Harold Minor, Shawn Kemp and Penny Hardaway suffer injuries or have off court problems which affect their careers and stop them from reaching their full potential.

Cheers
Matt
 
I think people these days look to invest more so than collect. Sad way to go about it, with cards, but I guess some people come out on top.

im not in the card game for the money as all the money i make some how gets thrown back at buying more cards for my pc. But i do like making the small profit. But another question to be raised with the over production of auto cards does it really matter what brand and design you go for regardless of price? Like an auto is auto and you could pick up a raymond felton auto of press pass for $10 or spend hundreds on a gold parallel of his spa rc auto. I know player collectors like to collect all the players cards but if your going for a small autograph collection does it really matter what the card is aslong as it features the players autograph on it.
Also if a player is traded would that effect the players card value. For ex. a player is traded from boston after spending his first 5 years in th team and than goes to say the rockets would his boston cards (autos, game used, rcs) take a beating in price.
interesting thread matt :D
 
I think the next step in autos will be redemptions where the player personalises the card -

"To Allstar
I wish you were on my team:shock:
Regards Shaq!!"

Well maybe he wouldn't write that much (yes I agree the "Regards" is a bit redundant!!!) but that would be a special 1/1. Although it's not much good if you want to sell it!!:D
 
to me it's all about willingness.

Marion (although I don't collect anymore) has 50,000+ easily auto's out there, but I don't collect to say I own a large majority of them, it's how much I want them and how much fun I have.

At the end of the day I can flood myself with these card statistics but regardless of all that, if it's not fun, it's not on.
 
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