[JunkyJoe]

Originally Posted by Empty77

I think Leon's approach was best, to estimate based on a known fixed number like total population and then take a percentage of that based on a personal experience/common sense guestimate of how many people out of X that you pass on the street might be a card collector.

This could work as long as we get several samples across the US -- urban/suburban/central/east/west/ etc... -- and as long as our common sense guesstimate is a general consensus among a decent-sized group of veteran collectors.

Originally Posted by Empty77

Another problem with guessing based on a percentage of total sales, besides there being so many sources of sales, with private companies not necessarily publishing that information, is the problem of figuring an average spend per collector per year---given that number could be wildly compromised by dealers/speculators in the hobby who aren't collecting per se but bidding against everyone for items simply to try and flip them. This could variously inflate or deflate the guestimate of collectors depending on how you look at it.

Agree, coming up with that average $ spent per collector / per year would go beyond a simple coin toss. I think this would also have to be hashed out amongst a large group of veteran collectors, to get a somewhat realistic number anyway. I also agree that the dealers/flippers would skew the numbers, which is why we'd have to include them as "active collectors," simply because they are a big part of the current market influence/prices at any given point in time.

Originally Posted by RCMcKenzie

It depends upon how you define 'collector.' I think tens of millions of people are baseball fans and might have a Carlton Fisk autographed photo or a Doc Gooden baseball in their office. The number of people that are daily grinding on a 1950's Topps set is probably less than 8,000 people. The number of people that might outbid me on T213 etc is like 8 and they are all on this board and have been for years and years.

I'd define an active collector as running the gamut -- from buying a couple cards a year for a few hundred$ ....to the collectors making weekly purchases and spending a few thousand$ per year ....all the way up to the dealers spending tens-of-thousands$ per year (see my response to Empty77 a couple paragraphs up), and even the rich dudes spending upwards of a couple-hundred-thousand$$$ per year on high grade Mantles, Mint Postwar rookies, etc.