The surprise launch of 2020 Garbage Pail Kids Sapphire is starting to hit collector’s mailboxes. We now have a look at the printed odds on the box, and wouldn’t you know it, Topps makes it as confusing as ever! Thanks to ebay user cardsarewhatwedo for sending along the odds and pictures of his box break. Each box contains 8 packs of 4 cards, wrapped in unmarked silver wrappers. There are unnumbered Dark Blue base cards in each pack. The odds are printed along the side of the box. For some reason Topps left off the odds for the Light Blue /99, and Green /50 parallels. The odds printed on the box are:
- Orange 1:4
- Gold 1:7
- Purple 1:10
- Red 1:20
- Padparadscha 1:96
Now this is where it gets confusing. The side of the box says the odds are “per pack”. However, all the evidence suggests the odds are actually per box. Printed on the top of the box it says “2 Parallels Inside”. In addition, collectors breaking boxes today have all pulled between 2-3 parallels per box. When looking at the math and numerous box breaks, it’s apparent the odds printed are per box.
So let’s look at the print run. How many boxes did Topps make? Based on the odds being per box:
- Orange 166 cards in set * /25 = 4150 total Orange cards * 4 odds = 16,600 boxes
- Gold 166 cards in set * /15 = 2490 total Gold cards * 7 odds = 17,430 boxes
- Purple 166 cards in set * /10 = 1660 total Orange cards * 10 odds = 16,600 boxes
- Red 166 cards in set * /5 = 830 total Red cards * 20 odds = 16,600 boxes
- Padparadscha 166 cards in set * * /1 = 166 total Padparadscha cards in set * 96 odds = 15,936 boxes
It appears there are right around 16,600 boxes produced of the set. How many parallels can a collector expect per box?
- 34,030 total parallels in set / 16,600 boxes = 2.05 parallels per box
At 2.05 parallels per box, that comes out to right what is printed on the top of the box, “2 parallels inside”. So how many base cards are there?
- Base Cards 32 cards per box – 2.05 parallels per box = 29.95 base cards per box * 16,600 total boxes = 497,170 total base cards / 166 cards in set = 2,995 per base card.
So there are right around 3,000 of each base card printed. While that seems like a lot it pales in comparison to the 45,000+ of each base card in Chrome OS3.
