General Forum

OK, this is more curiosity than anything else, but when companies like Panini produce On-demand cards, do they hold a certain number back for customer service complaints, etc.?

Specifically, I'm wondering about the Panini Instant football set. The Cade York card (#7), for example, has a print run listed on the back of the card of 291.  Does that mean that *291* cards were ordered and sent to customers, or does it mean something like 271 cards were ordered and they printed an extra 20 or whatever in case of problems?

If every card in the print run is shipped out, what happens if there is a customer complaint?  Printing another card would make the stated print run incorrect unless they could reclaim and destroy the defective card.  

Most likely 291 were SOLD.

That was my thought as well, but that means those print runs may not be accurate (in this case ISN'T).  What got me thinking about the issue is that I originally ordered 5 copies of the 2022 #7 card, but when they shipped my package, they only sent a single card.  I contacted them about it and after some time they shipped out a replacement for my order.  I was expecting the 4 cards I was missing and was wondering if the 291 print run included those 4 cards or if they had mistakenly printed not enough and now printed 4 extras (bringing the real print run up to 295).  Would they correct the number on the cards, giving us a ERR/COR pair?  

When I got the package, they sent not four, but actually FIVE copies of the card (and a few 2019 Black Friday packs as an apology), meaning that even if they had included my 4 missing cards in the print run, there was now an additional card that was never ordered.  They did not, BTW, correct the print run number on the back.

We'll almost certainly never know what the true print run for the card is then, but I thought I'd throw the question out there as a curiosity.

vrooomed wrote:

Most likely 291 were SOLD.

They very well could have released an extra one out into the wild. :)

When I worked at Star, we printed the promo cards on the same sheets as the rest of the set, but only released 1 promo per every 5 sets. So if a set had a 1,000 set print run, we'd only release 200 of the promos. And we printed about 25% extra for the sets so that we'd have replacements for any complaints. That meant there were literally hundreds of promos printed that never got out the door (mostly). I'd be willing to bet that Panini and Topps do the same with their on-demand cards. They issue the number sold, yet print more.