Product Ranks

Some of the caveats concerning ranking the scarcity of Post cereal football cards has been discussed on previous pages. The chart below shows aggregated product card counts—combined totals for all similar brands by size. At issue is whether card counts are a better indicator than product panel counts in determining short print cards. Product panel counts were calculated by combining like cereal brands by size and dividing by the number of total cards on all of a product's panels. For instance aggregate Post Toasties 18 oz. panel totals were found by adding the card total for PT18 panels 1 and 131 and dividing by 14 since there are two panels of seven cards each. This process was repeated for each of the 24 products included in this data collection. The percentage for each product was then calculated by dividing one product's aggregate number of panels by the total number of panels for all 24 products as shown in the chart below. Not surprisingly, cards from the two large boxes of Post Toasties show up as a higher panel percentage than any other cereal product. Using panel percentage as a basis for comparison helps level the field of cereal products with different card counts per back panel.

The scarcest products are duplicate print products—Crispy Critters and Top 3. Crispy Critters was a new product that came out earlier in 1962 and the 8 oz. box was used for Post baseball cards. Top 3 was first made in 1961 and lasted only until 1963. It makes sense that Post didn't produce these products in large quantities, the result being small numbers of these cards.

The two products one would suspect of being scarce—Grape Nuts 11 oz. and Oat Flakes 10 oz.—indeed are. The Post cereal football collecting community has traditionally regarded Grape Nuts 11 oz. cards as one of the most difficult to find and this chart shows that to be true, but not by much as 10 oz. Oat Flakes cards are not far behind. In 1962, Oat Flakes were only a three-year-old product that doesn't appear to have been overly popular.

The next product on the list is the Post Toasties 12 oz. flip-out spout version that was a new test box. The regular top flap box comes in four spots lower. The percentage of top flap to flip-out spout boxes is approximately 60-40. Combining the totals for the two 12 oz. Post Toasties boxes would move it down to the third most produced.

Bran Flakes 11 oz. and Raisin Bran 10 oz. panels finished in a virtual dead heat for seventh and eighth lowest production. One would suspect that their actual production numbers were very close.

Cards from 8 oz. Post Toasties panels were slightly rarer than those from Post Tens panels. Short printed cards of #41 Jess Richardson and #48 Jim Gibbons are the only two that appeared on both products and both brands of each card showed up in nearly equal numbers for both Post Tens and Post Toasties 8 oz. cards.

With Sam Baker being on a Post Tens tray, the natural assumption might be that Post Tens cards would be near the top of the scarcity list. Yet, Post Tens finished below ten other products.

Grape Nuts Flakes 16 oz. cards were next, even with panels 6 and 70 being double printed.

Grape Nuts 16 oz. cards were printed in larger quantities than their smaller size sibling. Tommy Davis, #94, was on the second GN16 panel and also on a Grape Nuts Flakes 16 oz. box, but is not considered a short print. The same goes for #19 Roosevelt Grier and #112 Joe Fortunato who were also on SCCF10 boxes. Neither #75 Paul Wiggin or #148 John David Crow are "guide" short prints even though they were paired, respectively, with tough RB10 and BF11 panel cards.

Sugar Coated Corn Flakes 10 oz. has generally been regarded as a short print cereal. Sugar Coated Corn Flakes panels 15 (Whittenton) and 54 (McCord) were printed twice as often as panels 145 (Tubbs) and 153 (Koman) as they were double printed in a three across by two back configuration. All but one of the short print cards on the SCCF10 panels are matched with one of the top six cereal products from this list. Carroll Dale's SCCF10 #163 was paired with a card from a GNF16 panel, but both the SCCF10 and GNF16 panels on which card #163 appeared were single prints, reducing the number of Dale cards printed.

Alpha-Bits ¾ oz. single serving panels were distributed in both Post Tens and Treat-Paks, so it adds up that AB¾ oz. cards should be more available than individual Post Tens cards.

Interestingly, several 10 oz. Rice Krinkles cards are considered short prints even though the counts for their cards are relatively high. The data gathered here shows a higher percentage of RK10 panels available than Grape Nuts Flakes 12 oz. and Alpha-Bits 13 oz. products. This is not what one would normally expect as several RK10 cards are considered to be short prints. However, many of those cards are paired with short prints from the top five most difficult products to obtain. Traditionally #97 Jimmy Johnson and #186 Frank Youso, both paired with Post Toasties 8 oz. cards have been listed by the guides as short prints. Ted Dean, #36, was a common card in early publications. Dean's card, along with #111 Mike Ditka were printed on the same Oat Flakes 10 oz. panel. Bill Anderson's #188 RK10 card, also printed on a BF11 panel, is considered a legitimate short print. Angelo Coia, as discussed in the section on assigned card numbers, appears only on one RK10 panel, thus his short print status. Don Bosseler's card #189 and Larry Wilson's #154 were also printed on GNF16 panels, while #35 Jimmy Carr's second card was from a Sugar Coated Corn Flakes 10 oz. panel. None of the last three are considered true short print cards.

The rest of the list has no panels containing what are considered to be short print cards. There are a few interesting notes from this group. Jerry Kramer's card was on Raisin Bran 14 oz. boxes and also a Post Tens tray along with short prints #176 Don Joyce and #193 Joe Krakoski. Krakoski has been a short print favorite since guides were first printed. It seems Kramer may have tagged along for the ride with Krakoski and Joyce and sellers have picked up on this common card being marked as a short print, resulting in a plentiful supply. In fact, Kramer's RB14 card was on a panel that was double printed. One of the Sugar Crisp 14 oz. panels features the only card of #55 Jim Martin. A reasonable argument could be made that this card could be classified as a short print. There are several cards from "common" panels that are paired with some tough short print panels, making those cards harder to collect than expected.

1962 Post Cereal Football Product Counts
Sorted by Percentage of Panels
Rank	Product	Count	# Panels	Pct of Cards	Pct of Panels
1	CC13	90	3.21	0.43%	0.32%
2	T310	259	7.19	1.22%	0.72%
3	CC8	200	8.33	0.95%	0.83%
4	GN11	78	19.50	0.37%	1.95%
5	OF10	441	22.05	2.09%	2.21%
6	PT12S	667	23.82	3.15%	2.38%
7	BF11	657	27.38	3.11%	2.74%
8	RB10	464	29.00	2.19%	2.90%
9	PT8	502	33.47	2.37%	3.35%
10	PT12T	967	34.54	4.57%	3.46%
11	P10	748	35.62	3.54%	3.57%
12	GNF16	1131	40.39	5.35%	4.04%
13	GN16	376	41.78	1.78%	4.18%
14	SCCF10	1226	43.79	5.80%	4.38%
15	AB¾	265	44.17	1.25%	4.42%
16	GNF12	1649	45.81	7.80%	4.59%
17	AB13	1365	48.75	6.45%	4.88%
18	RK10	1257	52.38	5.94%	5.24%
19	BF16	1502	53.64	7.10%	5.37%
20	RB14	1197	59.85	5.66%	5.99%
21	SC14	1265	60.24	5.98%	6.03%
22	SC9	1441	80.06	6.81%	8.01%
23	AB8	1983	82.63	9.38%	8.27%
24	PT18	1420	101.43	6.71%	10.15%