GPKNews.com

This is Part 2 of a two part series on the production of 2023S1 (2021S2) GPK Vacation. If you missed Part 1 you can go here to catch up.

In the first post we looked at how many packs/boxes/cases were produced of 2023S1 (2021S2) Garbage Pail Kids GPK Goes on Vacation. Here’s a review of what we came up with.

• Total Production – 1,737,000 Packs
• Collector – 180,000 Collector Packs or about 7,500 Collector Boxes or about 937 Collector Cases
• Retail Display – 297,000 Retail Display Packs or about 12,375 RD Boxes or about 1,546 RD Cases
• Blaster Box – 1,260,000 Blaster packs or 126,000 Blaster boxes or about 3,150 Blaster cases

I’ll be using these numbers to try to come up with an idea how many of each type of parallel and insert were created for the set. This will give you a good idea how rare a set is and how quickly you need to snap up that card for your rainbow! I’ll also compare some of this info to the previous sets for reference. As a reminder, in addition to using the sell sheet and odds, we will also have to make some assumptions and flat out guesses when trying to figure some of these out.

So how many of each type of card was made? Compared to Chrome 5, GPK Vacation is a breeze to figure out. Topps supplied enough information for us to figure out each pack type. Therefore, that allows us to figure out how many of each parallel and insert were made. Like previous sets, Topps has continued to number many card types. This means we already know most of the parallel and insert numbers already! Makes this post a lot easier! We know Asphalt /66, Blue /99, Red /75, and Gold /50 for the parallels, Artist Autos /75, and State Quarter Relics /99.

First let’s figure out production for the three parallels that aren’t numbered.

• Black Borders – 180,000 Collector packs / 1 Odds (doh) = 180,000 total Black borders / 200 cards in set = 900 per card.
• Green Borders – 1,557,000 Retail packs / 1 Odds (doh) = 1,557,000 total Green borders / 200 cards in set = 7,785 per card.
• Yellow Borders – 1,260,000 Blaster packs / 5 Odds = 252,000 total Yellow borders / 200 cards in set = 1,260 per card.

Again, since we were able to determine each pack type, figuring out the unnumbered parallels was easy. No big surprises here, the sharp drop in production leads to much less of each parallel type compared to Book Worms. Of course there are still a large number, especially the greens. Putting these sets together is very doable for many collectors.

Now let’s take a look at the various insert sets.

• Wacky Packages – 180,000 Collector packs / 24 odds = 7,500 total Wacky Package / 10 cards in set = 750 per Wacky
• Luggage Tags – 180,000 Collector packs / 24 odds = 7,500 total Luggage Tags / 12 cards in set = 625 per Tag
• Famous Landmarks – 297,000 Retail Display Packs packs / 3 odds = 99,000 total Landmarks / 10 in set = 9,900 per Landmark
• Don’t Make Me Pull This Car Over – 1,577,000 Retail Packs / 3 odds = 519,000 total Pull Over / 20 cards in set = 25,950 per card
• Travel Stickers – 1,260,000 Blaster Packs / 3.33 odds = 378,378 total Travel / 10 cards in set = 37,837 per card

A few notes on the Inserts. With less collector boxes and a higher Wacky set compared to Book Worms, it’s no wonder why the per card numbers are so low. Wacky’s are about 1/3 compared to Book Worms. Luggage Tags are even less. While those sets are doable, it might take a little searching and more money for collectors to complete. It’s no surprise the retail inserts have huge print runs, especially the ones found in Blaster packs. The Travel Sticker odds are the only ones I noticed that were wrong. For some reason, Topps listed the odds as 1:4. This makes no sense as they are advertised as 3 per Blaster, and box breaks show there are indeed 3 per blaster. I guess since the odds were greater than 3 Topps just used the next number up. The problem with that is, using 1:4 would throw the actual numbers off. So in my calculations I used the real odds of 1:3.33 packs. When looking at the tins we know the  total Collector tins are 7,500. The Blaster tins appear to be evenly distributed, so 180,000 boxes / 3 different tins = 42,000 of each Blaster Tin.

Now let’s turn our attention to the Employee Base Short Print Cards. These are the second group of employee SP cards to appear in a set, the first was in the 35th anniversary set. However, this time Topps was nice enough to not only put them on the checklist, but also put odds on each pack type. The ones from the 35th did not list odds, so we couldn’t figure out the print run on those. However, this time we can.

• 180,000 Collector Packs / 652 odds = 276 SPs in Collector packs
• 297,000 Retail Display Packs / 1,056 odds = 281 SPs in Retail Display packs
• 1,260,000 Blaster Packs / 3,670 odds = 343 SPs in Blaster packs
• 276 + 281 + 343 = 900 total SPs / 9 in set = 100 each SP

Wow, well that number came out pretty even. Gives me even more confidence the pack production numbers are correct. Some collectors are going to see there are 100 of each and be surprised. Don’t let that fool you! These are still rare, they aren’t coming out of every case or anything. With the much easier odds in Collector boxes, we are seeing a good number of these early. Antidotally these seem to be falling more frequently than the 35th anniversary employee SPs. But truly since we don’t have a way to figure out the print run of the first batch of these, we have no way to know if there are more of this second group of employee Short Print cards.

Collectors are going to see the sharp declines in production and  might think GPK Vacation is rare. That’s both true and untrue. There are a lot of Blaster Tins, a lot. So many, that this set is still the fourth highest produced modern GPK set. However, the Collector tins, and to an extent the Retail Display boxes aren’t nearly as overly produced as some recent series. Collector tins might dry up fairly quickly and could see pricing increase on those. Blasters however, will be side by side with Chrome 5 and Book Worms boxes on store shelves for weeks and months to come.  

Finally, can we figure out how many base cards were produced? Not really, but we can use what we know and give it our best guess! We know Collector packs have 6 or 7 base cards per pack. We will go with 7 for those packs. Retail Display and Blaster also have 6 or 7, but there are more packs than usual that have 6, so let’s use 6.5 for these pack types.

Base Cards – (180,000 Collector packs * 7 cards per pack)  + (1,557,000 Retail packs * 6.5 cards per packs) = 11,380,500 total base cards / 200 cards in set = 56,902 per base card

Still well over 10 million base cards! There will be plenty of base sets to go around. But hey, at least it’s less than half the Book Worms sets!

This is Part 2 of a two part series on the production of 2023S1 (2021S2) GPK Vacation. If you missed Part 1 you can go here to catch up.

This is Part 1 of a 2 part series on the production of 2023 Series 1 (2021S2) Garbage Pail Kids GPK Goes on Vacation. Part 2 will be posting soon.

After a 17 month delay, 2023S1 (2021S2) GPK Vacation finally was released. There were a number of reasons why the set was delayed so long. Regardless of the reason, collectors became frustrated having to wait. It became even more of a problem when the set was passed over for the release of GPK Book Worms last year. Production on Book Works was tremendously high. Collectors have been waiting to see if GPK Vacation would surpass that set, or come back to earth. The slightly good news is, while there is a lot of this set, it did not surpass Book Worms. Read on to find out where this set ranks!

First my disclaimer! Production numbers are never an exact science, and Topps makes it tough on us. In order to attempt to solve this riddle we need to look very closely at the clues in both the odds and the sell sheets. Some things to keep in mind for this post. 1) Topps doesn’t want the public to know exactly how much of each card was made. Why? No idea really, I think its dumb, but historically Topps only provides enough information to get close. 2) We need to make some assumptions. Those assumptions will be based on the clues we have, but still some guessing has to happen. 3) The odds never quite seem to come out completely equal. However, we can round and get pretty close to how much was produced. 4) Topps changes what is printed from what the sell sheet says all the time. This will throw off all our numbers. 5) Keep in mind Topps historically holds back up to 5% of the print run to cover missing hits, damaged cards, and their No Purchase Necessary program. These numbers would include that 5%. With all that in mind let’s get started…(Warning lots of math coming up. If you don’t want to read about the process, skip to the bottom for the answer sheet!)

As always we need to figure out the entire print run. Usually, we would use a card type that is numbered and has the same odds in all pack types. In the past Gold parallels would work for this. This time Golds or Asphalt won’t work because the odds are different across the board. We can still figure out total pack production, we will just have to go pack type by pack type. First a quick note on odds. Believe it or not, the printed pack odds actually seem to be correct! This is very rare, I mean very rare. For years now most retail sets either had the parallel odds doubled, or like the case with Chrome 5, just random nonsense numbers chosen for odds. It’s great that Topps got it right this time. It’s not hard, and hopefully this is a new trend.

Let’s start by looking at Collector packs. Both the Red parallel and State Quarter Relics are exclusive to collector packs. We can look at the odds to determine how many collector packs were made.

• Quarter Relics – 50 cards in set * 99 made per card = 4,950 total quarters * 36 odds = 178,200 Collector packs made
• Red borders – 200 cards in set * 75 made per card = 15,000 total Red borders * 12 odds = 180,000 Collector packs made

Both those numbers are very close. We are safe to use the 180,000 number for Collector packs. The surprise here is the sharp decrease from Book Worms. Less than half of the collector packs from Boom Worms, and even down from Food Fight. It’s clear the demand from a collector pack standpoint was not there for this release. Now let’s look at Retail Display boxes. We can use the Blue parallels exclusive to Retail Display boxes to get the pack amounts.

• Blue borders – 200 cards in set * 99 made per card = 19,800 total Blue borders * 15 odds = 297,000 Retail Display packs made

Case break examples have shown the odds on the Blues have been right on. Therefore, again we can go with 297,000 as the pack number for Retail Display boxes. Another huge surprise, as again the production of Retail Display boxes is about half of Book Worms. Now don’t get overly excited yet, production isn’t down this much as we will see with Blasters. Blaster packs sadly don’t have a numbered exclusive parallel or insert card. So to figure out the Blaster pack number we are going to have to go backward so to speak using Gold and Asphalt parallels. If we figure how how many golds and asphalts are in Collector and Retail
Display packs, then we know what’s left to be in Blasters. We can then use the Blaster odds to get total Blaster packs.

• Gold borders
• 200 cards in set * 50 of each gold = 10,000 total Golds
• Collector – 180,000 packs / 57 odds = 3,157 Golds in Collector packs
• Retail Display – 297,000 packs / 95 odds = 3,126 Golds in RD packs
• 10,000 total golds – 3,157 collector golds – 3,126 RD golds = 3,718 Golds in Blaster packs
• Blaster – 3,178 Golds in Blasters * 338 odds = 1,256,684 total Blaster packs

• Asphalt borders
• 200 cards in set * 66 of each Asphalt = 13,200 total Asphalt
• Collector – 180,000 packs / 45 odds = 4,000 Asphalt in Collector packs
• Retail Display – 297,000 packs / 72 odds = 4,125 Asphalt in RD packs
• 13,200 total Asphalt – 4,000 collector Asphalt – 4,125 RD Asphalt = 5,075 Asphalts in Blaster packs
• Blaster – 5,075 Asphalt in Blasters * 250 odds = 1,268,750 total Blaster packs

Looking at the numbers from Gold and Asphalts borders are pretty close to each other. To make the math easier let’s go with a number about in the middle, 1,260,000 for total Blaster packs. And there we go, that’s where Topps produced a lot of the product. That’s a large number for Blasters, in fact only Chrome 5 has a higher Blaster count. (Book Worms didn’t have Blasters.) This puts the retail production very close to the Food Fight set, but again nothing close to Book Worms.

Here’s what I believe the total production numbers to be for GPK Vacation:

• Total Production – 1,737,000 Packs
• Collector – 180,000 Collector Packs or about 7,500 Collector Boxes or about 937 Collector Cases
• Retail Display – 297,000 Retail Display Packs or about 12,375 RD Boxes or about 1,546 RD Cases
• Blaster Box – 1,260,000 Blaster packs or 126,000 Blaster boxes or about 3,150 Blaster cases

Production is down significantly from Book Worms. Vacation production is in fact down slightly from Food Fight, it‘s very similar overall. Let’s take a look how this set compares to recent retail releases.

• Total Pack Production
  • 35th Anniversary – 1,113,000
  • Food Fight – 1,790,000
  • Book Worms – 3,635,000
  • Vacation – 1,737,000 (52.2% decrease in production vs. Book Worms)
• Collector Pack Production
  • 35th Anniversary – 130,000
  • Food Fight – 225,000
  • Book Worms – 405,000
  • Vacation – 180,000 (55.5% decrease in production vs. Book Worms)
• Retail Pack Production
  • 35th Anniversary – 983,000
  • Food Fight – 1,565,000
  • Book Worms – 3,245,000
  • Vacation – 1,557,000 (52.0% decrease in production vs. Book Worms)

As much as I was surprised by the increases in production recently, I’m almost just as surprised by the huge decrease in production in GPK Vacation. Production decreases were more than half across the board compared Book Worms. Production was also down when compared to Food Fight. Don’t get me wrong however, there is still a lot of this set, especially when it comes to Blaster tins. The set is the fourth highest produced in the modern GPK era behind Book Worms, Chrome 5, and Food Fight. What might be the most surprising number is this is the first decrease in production in years. Why is that? Is demand less for GPK? Has Topps realized the crazy production for Boom Worms and Chrome 5 didn’t make sense? It’s probably a combination of things. The set’s delay may have had more to do with decreases than anything. A lot of collectors cancelled their preorders due to the long delay. This could help explain the decreases in Collector and Retail Display production. Topps is now caught up from their delayed releases. They currently have planned one more retail and one more Chrome release for 2023. What will be very interesting to see is if production numbers for those sets more closely resemble GPK Vacation or GPK Boom Worms.

This is Part 1 of a 2 part series on the production of 2023 Series 1 (2021S2) Garbage Pail Kids GPK Goes on Vacation. In Part 2 we will look at production numbers for all parallel and insert sets. Part 2 will be posted soon.