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

[JunkyJoe]

Originally Posted by Exhibitman

... 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.

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?