Quote:
Originally Posted by mechanicalman
Sean, why do you think the card market requires “millions of millenials” to keep prices strong? I’d bet that the card market today is influenced by less than 250000 collectors, perhaps fewer.
|
That number sounds reasonably plausible. But those 250,000 (or so) dedicated collectors emerged out of an initial base of millions of children who had cards as kids, with their numbers being whittled away as they grew up and many lost interest.
So I wouldn't say that you need millions of young people to become serious collectors to sustain it. But if you want to keep that 250,000 number of regular collectors, you do at least need a much larger cohort of young people to at least dabble in card collecting at some point so that they can decide if its something that they like or not, on the assumption from past experience that only a small number of those who dabble will go on to become regular collectors. That is where I get that "millions" number from.
I live in Japan so my direct knowledge of what young people in the US are doing these days is limited, but my impression is that there are nowhere near the same number of young people being exposed to the hobby like they used to.