Ever wondered how many ACTIVE collectors there are in the United States?
 

I've pondered this a few times lately, trying to guesstimate approximately how many active collectors of Postwar cards we have in the United States at this point in time (Postwar up to 1980). By active collectors, I mean people who add at least a couple of cards to their collections every year.

I did a little math based on the current U.S. population and some of my own quasi-logic, and came up with a number of somewhere between 40,000 and 60,000. Now, I'm not claiming this to be accurate, as it's more of a wild guesstimate than anything.

Have any of you here tried dragging this through your brains yet? Have you come up with any guesstimates of your own?

A few observations:
I think there are 10,000 registered accounts on this board and about 40,000 on BO’s forum. Not everyone is active, but that’s a good starting point.
I don’t run in a big collector’s circle, but from conversations at the local card show, there are many savvy and experienced collectors who surprisingly not are a part of these two boards.
The population of the US is 325,000,000, or so. If as few as one percent of the country collects, that’s more than 3 million. If only 60,000 people collect, that’s just .018 percent (if my math is right).
Just thinking about the massive sums of money in the hobby (auction houses, eBay, not to mention LCS, shows, etc), and I have a hard time imagining just 60,000 people fueling it.
My best wild guess is that it is in the low single digits for percentage of the population that collects, 2-3 perhaps, meaning about 9 million collectors at the top of the range.


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One more..
COMC shows a bit more than 210,00 buyers on the site. Even with inactive accounts, buyers who don’t purchase cards, etc, I see that as indicative of a much larger collecting population.


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Thanks for opining. I do have a feeling my "40K to 60K" guess might be conservative. There must be some way to conclude a good ballpark number (pun intended :D) using certain metrics...ahh the quest for that magic formula! I guess if we knew the total annual $$$ brought in between all the auction houses + ebay + card shows combined, we could divide that by what we think the average collector might spend in a year. So, for example -- just for some wildly speculative numbers, let's say:

$300,000,000 per year total from auction houses+ebay+card shows (U.S. buyers only, Postwar to 1980 only)

$2,500 per year (avg) spent by each collector

So.... 300,000,000 divided by 2,500 = [?] 120,000 [?] active U.S. collectors

Again, these are just random speculative numbers I'm throwing out there. I hope others can throw in some realistic metrics that we can use.

The way I came up with my original range was:

330,000,000 (approx. U.S. population),
divided by 2 (male/female, sports card collecting is male-dominated),
divided by 5 (mostly 40-60 age group, the U.S. population is generally aged 1-100 yrs old),
divided by 30 (assuming 1 in every 30 males aged 40-60 is an avid baseball fan)
divided by 20 (assuming 1 in 20 of those avid baseball fans is an active Postwar collector)

= [??] 55,000 [??] active Postwar collectors in the U.S.

Of course, without decent metrics to use, it leaves us with some pretty wide ranging guesstimation.

Active collectors are apt to go to local card shows and, of course, events like the National. Looking at (or getting a feel for) attendance numbers from various events across the country would probably help add some more insight to the subject at hand.

Good exercise -
 

I've seen a similar question posed in job interviews - "How many piano tuners are there in Chicago?"

The point of the question is to watch someone go through some type of logical cypherin' to come up with a defensible number.

TJ

I'm thinking that the most accurate route would be to divide total annual sales by average amount spent annually by each collector. Obviously, that goofy formula I used in my initial calculation leaves way too much room for speculation.

I think I read somewhere in the past year that PWCC alone does $50,000,000 in annual auction sales. Would it be safe to say that the majority of that $50 million is in Postwar-to-1980 baseball? And to narrow it down even more, there are a couple other auction houses that do lots of revenue. What, maybe $20-$30 million each? Then throw in, what, $10-$20 million total for the remaining smaller outfits? So, if these guesses were somewhat accurate, then the total annual revenues for the auction houses would be somewhere around $100,000,000, give or take.

Then add in ebay, outfits like COMC, card shows, and the few remaining card shops --- is anyone willing to guess how much that would add up to for Postwar to 1980 annual sales?

The National attendance runs about 35,000 a year. It has been as high as over 100,000 (the infamous 1991 Anaheim show). That represents the hardest core collectors who want to and can afford to make the trip. There's another chunk of attendees every year who are not paid admissions: those who cadge badges from friends with booths. I think that probably offsets the repeat ticket buyers in terms of counting.

I'd say maybe 1 in 10 hardcore collectors I know in SoCal actually make it to the National. Then there are all the collectors who aren't as obsessed as we are but who are there nonetheless.

I really don't think that the massive product creation every season in every sport is absorbed by five figures or even six figures worth of collectors. If you drill down all the way to kids who collect this year's cards and work up from there to the whackos like me who go to every show where cards might be available and spend an inordinate amount of time surfing the net for cards, I'd guess the numbers are a lot larger than the 'census' of hardcore collectors who are active on boards and who attend the National.

The US population is about 326M. If 1 in 400 people collect baseball cards then the number of collectors would be approx. 815,000 ......so that is my guess though I think a round million sounds about right. :)

ps...I realize there are collectors in other countries but for baseball I am pretty sure the US is the major place they are collected.

I agree, there are tons of younger collectors of modern cards. I'm sure there are even plenty of older modern collectors. And yes, there does seem to be a strong market for the newer cards.

As far as younger people who will eventually collect vintage cards years down the road --- that's a whole other conversation, and a whole other set of metrics. For now though, let's disregard the creation of new product, and also disregard cards from other sports, just for the sake of this specific topic.

So, focusing solely on current annual sales of Postwar-to-1980 baseball cards, how many of those show attendees do you think we can exclude (for now at least) as being modern card collectors?

That total number sounds pretty reasonable, if not a little optimistic [IMO]. But then ask yourself, how many of those 800,000+ collectors collect Postwar to 1980 baseball?

If we exclude the guys who collect modern and Prewar baseball cards, then what number would we be left with?

I think you meant exclude modern and postwar collectors. That would cut out the majority of 'serious' card collectors for sure. How would you handle those who collect across the board? The # of prewar-only collectors is certainly a fraction of the total number of even the hardcore collecting base. I mean, I collect across all eras. I have 19th Century cards and I have 2018 cards. Do I count into the prewar census?

For some issues I suspect that even 100 collectors would be an overestimation. Take Exhibit cards for example. I think I know most of the serious Exhibit collectors due to feedback on my book and years of trading and list comparisons, and there's maybe 50 of them at most across all subjects, plus a few dozen more who aren't ardent about Exhibits but who are doing sets of various types, mostly baseball and football. That's why it is an area that is reasonably priced, except for a few cards that have crossed over to popular collecting (e.g., the 1925 Gehrig RC, 1923-24 Ruth) . Even the Ruth and Gehrig cards are reasonable as compared to candy and gum issues.

Actually, I meant to include only Postwar to 1980 collectors, since I'm trying to figure out approximately how many active collectors collect those years specifically.

I realize that there are some who collect baseball cards across the board -- modern, vintage, tobacco, photos, etc. Would it be safe to assume they are a minority compared to the number of collectors who focus 99% on just 1 era of cards, say ... modern only, or, tobacco only?

Most collectors I know who collect postwar also collect prewar. I'd say people who are exclusive to one era or the other are a small part of the collecting base compared to those who collect across eras.

Ok, so would it be safe to say that we could include ~50% of the Prewar collectors with the Postwar collectors? For my personal collection, I'd estimate only 1% or 2% is Prewar 30's cards, around 5% to 7% is post-'80 "junky" cards, and the rest is Postwar to late 70's... so then, about 90% of my collection is late 40's to early 70's, mostly somewhere toward middle of that year range.

Now, on occasion, I do still buy a Prewar or post-1980 card, but it's pretty rare -- I'd say less than 5% of my recent purchases. So, I'd consider myself to be solidly in the "Postwar vintage" group.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

So I'm thinking the best way to get to the number is to first all of agree on what the definition of a collector is - is it the 10 year old kid whose father gave him some cards for his birthday, the older 'retired' hobbyist who has a nice collection but doesn't spend $$ on it anymore, or is it the guy chasing the shiny stuff?

I'd put out a definition that a collector is anyone who would be interested in going to the National should it be around the corner from his neighborhood.

If we all agree on a definition, then let's all put up our best guess and then use the 'wisdom of crowds' to get to a best estimate.

My guess is based on the people I work with, which is about 2000. Of those, I know of two other collectors, and probably don't know of another 2-4. So that's a total of about 6 per 2000 people, or .0.3%. If the US population is 327 million, that gives us 981,000 'collectors'.

What's your number?

Hello all,

I went ahead and edited my original post to include "ACTIVE Collectors" in the thread title, to try and eliminate some of the confusion. So by "active" collectors, I'm talking about those who've made purchases in the past year or so, and who are still actively looking or bidding at least once every few months. They may spend as little as $100 or $200 this year on a couple of cards for their collection.

I'm sure there are collectors who attend the major shows, yet they manage to not make any purchases. I'd have to think that for most of them, however, if they are interested enough to attend a show, then they most likely will be making at least one or two minor purchases at some point during that year. Or, are there a good number of attendees who only browse and never buy, or who still attend shows but haven't added to their collections in years?

If everyone does their own research, we should be able to come up with an estimate percentage. Add up all the people you know personally ( at work, family, relatives, friends etc) and divide by the number who "activity" collect cards. Then use this percentage against the total population. My percentage came out to about 1% (me) x 327 million = 3 million. Not many of these go to shows, or buy hobby publications etc. Most publications have ceased printing. Check the auctions, not a lot of bids total( 1,000's by the same people).

So maybe a few million buy some cards, but only about 50,000 or less are really in the hobby, in my opinion. Pre-war ? .

More than we think but less than we would surmise

Here is an example: I do free admission for my December show each year. There is a nice man who ONLY comes to that show and none of my other shows during the year and is working on his 1970 set. He is actively collecting the set but not in a real rush. I define him as a collector but someone else might not.

Just an example

Rich

I appreciate all the replies so far!
One word of advice ...
Don't let yourself think about it too much, or you might end up with a brain cramp (I speak from personal experience on this one :confused:).