Limited-Run Baseball Equipment

Most equipment is made to demand: a model stays in production for as long as it sells, and the number made is whatever that turns out to be. A fixed run reverses the order. The quantity is set first, the pieces are made to that number, and production ends when the number is reached, whether or not there is demand for more.

That is the Bass definition of a release. The Resurrection was made "in a production run fixed before the first bat was made", and its run is 500 pieces. The number is stated on the release page because it is a real, confirmed figure; a release without a confirmed run shows no number at all.

A numbered piece carries its place in the run. The Resurrection's record lists a certificate of authenticity and a production number, one of 500, with each bat, and the Owners page describes every bat arriving with a numbered tag and the card for its release: the owner's record that the bat came from that run.

A number is not a rank. Bat 7 and bat 407 are the same bat, made to the same standard; the number says which one it is, and that the run was counted.

Some releases are sold and some are allocated. A release offered by allocation is never added to a cart: its page carries one action, Request Allocation, and an allocation is offered personally, "in numbers small enough to count". A release that is sold directly has a cart, the same one every other Bass piece uses.

Which applies is shown on the release page itself. The Resurrection is sold directly. When a future release is offered by allocation, its page will say so, and the request is the way in.

The Releases page shows what is open now. The house's rule for each is stated there: "Each release is a fixed run. When it closes it is not made again - it moves to the archive and stays there." The Archive is the permanent record of closed releases, kept visible "so the run, and the people who own it, are on the record", with the production figure shown only where a real, confirmed run exists.

Owning a piece from a release also puts the owner first in line for the next one: the Owners page states that owners hear about a release before it is announced anywhere else.

With made-to-demand equipment, "sold out" means the shelf is empty until the next delivery. With a fixed run it can mean the run is complete, and the house's rule for a release is that a closed release is not made again. A later bat with the same name would be a different release, with its own run and its own number, and it would say so.

Not everything in the house is a release. Accessories, apparel, slides and the under-glove are open shelves: ordinary goods presented properly, added to the house as they are made, bought without an allocation and not counted as fixed runs. Within the Hawk sub-brand the Albino Snake fielding glove is recorded as "created as a collector-level statement piece", which describes its place in the collection, not a stated production number.

Collectibility is a judgement the market makes, not one the house makes for it. Bass states the run, numbers the pieces, keeps the record and makes no claim about what a piece will be worth to anyone else.