General Forum

I am databasing my sets and have come across the following with two different sets — the 2015 and 2016 sets.

In the 2016 set, for example, Joe Smith (Card No. 681). Right below his bio and his intro on the right are the following numbers: 0446/2016. The card in the 2015 was similar to this, as well. 

Does anyone know what they mean? I'm assuming 2016 stands for the year as the 2015 card had xxxx/2015.

Thanks for any assistance, cause I can't find info anywhere.  

They're serial numbers.

As Cigars said, they are serial numbered cards.  Some cards only have a limited amount produced, and each individual card gets a number out of however many created.  As such, you may sometimes find the card company getting cute and producing the amount of the card as the year it is released.  For instance Topps baseball this year has a gold SN parallel with all of them being XX/2017.

If a card is serial numbered, it should be listed in the database under Notes 1 as SNXX, with the XX being the total number of the cards produced, not the actual number of the card.

So for example, your Joe Smith card should be listed as SN2016, showing that all those cards will be one of those 2,016 cards.  

Thank you both. Would a set have more than one SN'd card in it set ... it's not something I was necessarily looking for when I started.

Well usually a card that is serial numbered is part of some sort of insert set or parallel set.  However, I have come across a couple sets where the base cards themselves are serial numbered.  

But yeah, there may be a release with multiple parallels sets where each parallel has their own SN total.  In most cases, unless it is something obscure, this site will have the parallels listed.  If it is a new set, they should be on here in short time.