Yount-O-Graph

I was bored today.  I don't know if you can tell, but I decided to play around with some numbers.  Below we have all the Robin Yount cards currently on the Trading Card Database in graph form.  Just to illustrate some points.

Couple things.  First, the TCB is by no means complete. Meaning that there are a lot of cards, oddballs and sets that need insert checklists. So we have to take these numbers with a grain of salt.  I didn't use Beckett.com's database, because I don't have access.  Second, most of the Police issue cards from the 80's are not represented.  I do believe that at least one card is in the numbers, but all the different city variations are not. Third most of the MSA discs from 1977 are also not represented right now and  I used my own count for 2014 cards, as I believe it to be much more accurate.

So here we have the card graphed by year issued.  And I have the data table below if you're looking for the counts.

1975	4
1976	6
1977	7
1978	4
1979	4
1980	3
1981	11
1982	12
1983	33
1984	28
1985	17
1986	26
1987	22
1988	29
1989	42
1990	73
1991	36
1992	52
1993	61
1994	24
1995	10
1996	0
1997	0
1998	0
1999	10
2000	21
2001	69
2002	122
2003	161
2004	473
2005	1000
2006	238
2007	135
2008	470
2009	134
2010	61
2011	56
2012	92
2013	125
2014	271

So what can we shine from this?  Well we can see the the bump in issue when Donruss and Fleer entered the competition in 1981.  We can also see when inserts were starting to take off in the late 80's and early 90's and we can see that Robin has been issued almost 7 times more cards since he retired than when he played. I consider his playing days cards 1975 to 1994 even though he retired in 1993 because he was issued regular base cards in almost every set that year.

We can also see that the biggest year for Yount cards was 2005.  Holy crap that's a lot of cards.  What happened in 2005?  Donruss and Upper Deck had a competition to see which company could put out the most sets with the most parallels.  And not just once, but multiple times.  I think Robin has over 100 cards issued in 2005 Donruss Diamond Kings alone.  We can see that 2005 was not only the biggest year, it was the biggest year by over double any other year.  The next biggest year being a toss up between 2004 and 2008.  We can also see a dip from Donruss' exit from the baseball card market and their brief return in 2008.  We can see the dip caused by Topps exclusivity and we can see the current uptick brought about by Panini coming back in with a lot of Hall of Fame focused sets.

I don't think we'll ever see the numbers like in the mid 2000's again, but that's ok. I'm happy that Robin has averaged over 200 new cards a year since 1999. That just means there's always going to be more to chase