Box Production Calculation
Wrapping up this section on scarcity, the chart below shows the estimated number of boxes for each of the products in the 1962 Post cereal promotion. The Post salesman's brochure titled Touchdown! announced that 500 million football cards would be produced on the backs of boxes. By taking the percentage of cards from each product and factoring in the number of cards on each cereal's panel, an estimate of how many boxes of each brand and size can be made.
There is an interesting thing about Post's production that should be brought up. Former Post employee and long-time collector Bill Rothney wrote in a 1984 letter to Kirk Robinson how some of the box production numbers came to be. Explaining the numbers for production runs, Bill wrote "...there are several variables which could affect the scarcity of an individual card in the set...The portion of the annual volume which was run with the promotion. Marketing personnel don't change the promotions on all of the cereals at the same time. Thus, anywhere from 10% to 35% of the annual volume could have been with the football set." This would help explain, among other things, why 1962 Oat Flakes 10 oz. baseball cards do not have much of a scarcity issue but are tremendously scarce for the football promotion.
From the raw card data it is apparent that Grape Nuts 11 oz. box production needs a downward adjustment due to the fact that having Sam and Dave Baker on the same panel drives the card numbers for that panel inordinately higher than the other panel. The rest of the products are presented using their original percentages.
These numbers are "just-for-fun" extrapolations and shouldn't be taken as actual 1962 Post football promotion production totals. The column titled "Box count by brand" is not only that but also would be the same number of individual cards produced for any particular player.
| 1962 Post Cereal Football Promotion Estimated Box Production | |||||
| Product | Count | Cards per box | Pct total | Total cards by brand | Box count by brand |
| CC13 | 90 | 7 | 0.43% | 2,127,660 | 303,951 |
| CC8 | 200 | 6 | 0.95% | 4,728,132 | 788,022 |
| GN11 | 78 | 2 | 0.37% | 1,843,972 | 921,986 |
| T310 | 259 | 6 | 1.22% | 6,122,931 | 1,020,489 |
| OF10 | 441 | 5 | 2.09% | 10,425,532 | 2,085,106 |
| PT12S | 667 | 7 | 3.15% | 15,768,322 | 2,252,617 |
| PT8 | 502 | 5 | 2.37% | 11,867,612 | 2,373,522 |
| BF11 | 657 | 6 | 3.11% | 15,531,915 | 2,588,652 |
| RB10 | 464 | 4 | 2.19% | 10,969,267 | 2,742,317 |
| GN16 | 376 | 3 | 1.78% | 8,888,889 | 2,962,963 |
| PT12T | 967 | 7 | 4.57% | 22,860,520 | 3,265,789 |
| GNF16 | 1131 | 7 | 5.35% | 26,737,589 | 3,819,656 |
| SCCF10 | 1226 | 7 | 5.80% | 28,983,452 | 4,140,493 |
| SC14 | 1265 | 7 | 5.98% | 29,905,437 | 4,272,205 |
| AB13 | 1365 | 7 | 6.45% | 32,269,504 | 4,609,929 |
| PT18 | 1420 | 7 | 6.71% | 33,569,740 | 4,795,677 |
| BF16 | 1502 | 7 | 7.10% | 35,508,274 | 5,072,611 |
| RB14 | 1197 | 5 | 5.66% | 28,297,872 | 5,659,574 |
| SC9 | 1441 | 6 | 6.81% | 34,066,194 | 5,677,699 |
| P10 | 748 | 3 | 3.54% | 17,683,215 | 5,894,405 |
| AB¾ | 265 | 1 | 1.25% | 6,264,774 | 6,264,774 |
| GNF12 | 1649 | 6 | 7.80% | 38,983,452 | 6,497,242 |
| RK10 | 1257 | 4 | 5.94% | 29,716,312 | 7,429,078 |
| AB8 | 1983 | 6 | 9.38% | 46,879,433 | 7,813,239 |
| Totals | 21,150 | 100.00% | 500,000,000 | 93,251,997 | |
