As somebody who has been behind the scenes at a number of high end auctions I can tell you that Bruce's numbers are high, especially in the current market. A number of the big spenders from a few years ago are no longer active.
There are maybe a handful of people who spend $1 million a year. While they might spend a million dollars a year, they are selling alot as well to finance that buying habit or are dealers who are selling for more money than they are spending. They are not dumping a million a year into the hobby and sitting on the stuff.
The typical big catalog auction mailing list is probably about 5,000. There are probably about 500 active bidders in an auction and 100-200 winners. Those numbers would probably be an average.
That $100 million in sales is actually about $50-$60 million. Many "sales" are not really "sales" at all.
I would revise Bruce's numbers to read
"There are about 200 people who spend at least $10,000 a year (in high value items) 100 who spend $50,000 a year or more and 30-40 folks who spend $100,000 a year or more. To the best our knowledge there are 5 dealers/collectors who spend in excess of a million dollars a year."
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