Something strange is going on with 2016 Panini Score Football. There seems to be a lack of Jared Goff base autograph rookie cards. In fact, I've checked eBay, COMC, YouTube, and the Blowout Cards forums, and I've only found one base autograph rookie card -- it was on eBay and is pictured below.
What's strange is that a ton of Jared Goff's autograph parallel cards have popped up and sold on eBay. I've been keeping track of how many of each parallel that I've seen pop up on eBay, COMC, YouTube, and the Blowout Cards Forums. By my count, and at the time of this post, I've counted 28 autograph parallels. And yet... only one base autograph has popped up! One! Quite strange to say the least.
For comparison, I checked to see if there was a shortage of Carson Wentz base autographs too. Nope. On eBay alone, there appears to be at least twelve base autograph rookie cards which have popped up for sale.
So what gives? Is the Jared Goff's base rookie autograph super short print? Maybe. If you ask me, there are two possibilities.
Possibility #1: Super Short Print
Only one card has popped up on the internet that I have seen. Granted, there might be other cards out there which have been pulled but just never made it on the internet. Maybe they were pulled at a LCS and immediately went into somebody's PC. Maybe they were pulled and were purchased or exchanged on the private market and out of the public eye of the internet.
Even if we account for this possibility, you would think that we would have seen more than just one base autograph rookie card by now.
To put things into perspective, Jared Goff has a total of 182 Score autograph parallel rookie cards:
35 - Showcase
25 - Gold Zone Jumbo
25 - Gold Zone (regular)
25 - Artist's Proof
20 - Red Zone
15 - Artist's Proof Jumbo
10 - Red Zone Jumbo
10 - First Down
6 - End Zone
5 - First Down Jumbo
4 - Printing Plates (black, cyan, magenta, yellow)
1 - Gem Master
1 - End Zone Jumbo
182 Total Autograph parallels.
As of the date of this post, a total of 28 autograph parallels cards have surfaced on the internet. Those 28 cards represent approximately 15.4% of the total autograph parallel cards available in the entire print run.
Assuming that the autograph parallel cards are fairly evenly (yet still randomly) distributed throughout the entire pack-out process we can assume that since we've seen 15.4% of the autograph parallel cards surface, that approximately 15.4% of the product has been opened so far.
Assuming that 15.4% of the product has been opened so far, and only one base autograph rookie card has been seen, that would mean that there are only about 6 or 7 base autograph rookie cards!
1 = 0.154x
x = 6.5
Imagine that! That is crazy! This isn't a wholly ridiculous theory either because these results match the other numbers we've seen so far for the ultra short print parallels like the End Zone parallels and the First Down Jumbo parallels.
To date, I've only seen 1 End Zone autograph parallel card pop up on the internet out of the total print run of 6!
To date, I've also only seen 1 First Down Jumbo autograph parallel card pop up on the internet out of the total print run of 5!
So if Jared Goff's Score base autograph rookie card only has a print run of a mere 6 or 7 cards, and about 15.4% of the product has been opened so far, then that would explain why we've only seen one card pop up on the internet for sale!
Heck, even if we assume that 25% of the product has been opened so far (since not everything which is opened ends up on the internet) and there are 3 other Jared Goff base autograph rookie cards which were pulled but never put on the internet, then that means that the print run is still a very low 16 cards!
4 = .25x
x = 16
The one thing about this possibility which doesn't make sense to me is why Panini would super short print the base autograph rookie card to an amount less than the parallel autograph rookie cards?
Getting a Scorecard parallel autograph rookie card numbered to only 35 is supposed to be more "rare" and "valuable" than the base autograph rookie card. But if there are only 6, 7, or 16 Jared Goff base rookie autograph cards, then those higher numbered parallel rookie cards aren't as valuable! Odd to say the least.
You'd think that if the highest Jared Goff autograph parallel rookie card is numbered to 35, that the base autographs (although not numbered) should probably be limited to 100 cards. That would make perfect sense. But if there were 100 Jared Goff base autograph rookie cards, and we're assuming 25% of the product has been opened, then we likely would have seen around 25 of the cards pulled so far! But we haven't and it's not even close.
So the numbers don't lie. I know we've made some assumptions about how much of the product has been opened so far and how many other base rookie cards there may be out there which never made it onto the internet, but by all accounts the evidence so far suggests that Jared Goff's Score base autograph rookie card is super short printed to a print run as low as 6.
Possibility #2: Insertion Error
The other possibility is that there was a major insertion error in the pack-out process and perhaps the Jared Goff base autograph rookie cards were not evenly (yet still randomly) distributed throughout the entire pack out process.
In other words, perhaps there are 100 base autograph rookie cards in the print run, but 94 of them got packed out in the last 20% of the cases, and only 6 got packed out int the initial 80% of the cases. This could explain why there has been a lack of rookie cards so far.
As more and more cases are opened, we could, quite suddenly see a bunch more of the autographs pop up on the internet.
This insertion error theory isn't as far fetched as it may sound. Panini had a huge collation problem in 2014 National Treasures Football, which resulted in major rookie cards for Odell Beckham Jr. and Teddy Bridgewater RPA not being evenly collated into cases during the packout process. This resulted in an estimated 2000 boxes of 2014 National Treasures Football being opened without a single Odell Beckham Jr. or Teddy Bridgewater RPA being pulled. You can read about my analysis on that debacle here.
Could this present situation with the Jared Goff Score Football base autographs be similar to the 2014 National Treasures collation debacle? Possibly.
If this is truly what is happening, then as more and more of the Score cases are opened, then we should start to see more and more of the base autograph cards pop up. This will likely be a very slow process though since Score isn't a super popular product line within the Panini brand. Plus, as Panini starts to release its other product lines throughout the year, the collectors will focus on those lines and open those cases instead of Score.
Conclusion
Only time will tell which possibility we are looking at right now. I will continue to keep an eye out for any other Jared Goff Score base autograph rookie cards. If they just never pop up at all despite more and more cases being opened, then we could be looking at Possibility #1 -- they're super duper short print. If all of a sudden as more and more cases get broken that we see a bunch of them pop up all at the same time, then we could be looking at Possibility #2 -- they were unevenly collated during the packout process and only began to appear once those cases with the cards were finally opened.
