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

[JunkyJoe]

Originally Posted by Bigdaddy

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?