thehumantorch Posted February 26, 2019 Share Posted February 26, 2019 On 2/22/2019 at 12:30 PM, dupont2005 said: To cosplay, get free swag, attend panels about movies and TV shows. Even among the readers and collectors in the crowd, I’m betting many of them read/collect moderns and hardcover reprints, not actual old back issues. I haven’t been to SDCC since like 1991 but from what I hear it’s barely about comics anymore and a lot of dealers consider it not even worth going. It’s more of a pop culture show now We need to define 'comic collectors'. Is a reader with a large collection of hardcover or trade reprints a collector? Is someone with a couple shorts in the attic or basement a collector? What if that guy with a couple shorts in his garage hasn't looked at them in 30 years but would call himself a comic collector if we asked. Is an original comic art collector a comic collector? What about the guy who went to a local pop culture show to get a comic signed by Stan Lee, it's the only comic he owns but it's proudly displayed in his home? When Stan Lee was at the Calgary Expo a few years ago he signed as fast as he could for 4 days straight. That's maybe a signature every 15 second or 4 per minute or 240 per hour or say 5760 if I assume 6 hours per day for 4 days of signatures. That's just the output of one creator at one show Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aweandlorder Posted February 26, 2019 Share Posted February 26, 2019 As many as there are, the answer will always be - not enough graders at CGC Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dupont2005 Posted February 26, 2019 Share Posted February 26, 2019 2 hours ago, thehumantorch said: We need to define 'comic collectors'. Is a reader with a large collection of hardcover or trade reprints a collector? Is someone with a couple shorts in the attic or basement a collector? What if that guy with a couple shorts in his garage hasn't looked at them in 30 years but would call himself a comic collector if we asked. Is an original comic art collector a comic collector? What about the guy who went to a local pop culture show to get a comic signed by Stan Lee, it's the only comic he owns but it's proudly displayed in his home? When Stan Lee was at the Calgary Expo a few years ago he signed as fast as he could for 4 days straight. That's maybe a signature every 15 second or 4 per minute or 240 per hour or say 5760 if I assume 6 hours per day for 4 days of signatures. That's just the output of one creator at one show For the purposes of the thread Kav defined it in the first post, being someone who collects CA and older comics. CycleGirl and kav 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thehumantorch Posted February 27, 2019 Share Posted February 27, 2019 4 hours ago, dupont2005 said: For the purposes of the thread Kav defined it in the first post, being someone who collects CA and older comics. Helps narrow it down a bit. He also limited this thread to the US. kav 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kav Posted February 27, 2019 Author Share Posted February 27, 2019 On 2/25/2019 at 9:58 AM, kav said: Taking all the educated guesses and all factors into account and using the formula the number of collectors in the US is 832,123. Ok 27 collectors dropped out and 35 new collectors added-new total: 832,131. That is all. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kav Posted February 27, 2019 Author Share Posted February 27, 2019 11 hours ago, thehumantorch said: We need to define 'comic collectors'. Is a reader with a large collection of hardcover or trade reprints a collector? Is someone with a couple shorts in the attic or basement a collector? What if that guy with a couple shorts in his garage hasn't looked at them in 30 years but would call himself a comic collector if we asked. Is an original comic art collector a comic collector? What about the guy who went to a local pop culture show to get a comic signed by Stan Lee, it's the only comic he owns but it's proudly displayed in his home? When Stan Lee was at the Calgary Expo a few years ago he signed as fast as he could for 4 days straight. That's maybe a signature every 15 second or 4 per minute or 240 per hour or say 5760 if I assume 6 hours per day for 4 days of signatures. That's just the output of one creator at one show Someone who actively purchases back issues, from CA or older is my def. OA only collectors do not qualify. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CycleGirl Posted March 20, 2019 Share Posted March 20, 2019 (edited) I've been wondering about this quite a lot. There are so many categories of collectors, active, inactive, buyers, traders, silver-age, golden-age, high-end, low-end, etc, etc. A significant proportion of active collectors also sell, so I figure we can at least get an order of magnitude by looking at the number of listings on the main selling sites. So I looked at this. Ebay about 3 million comic listings Golden Age Listings 113,190 Silver Age Listings 330,422 Bronze Age Listings 509,677 Copper Age Listings 335,473 Modern Age 1,920,054 ComicLink For Sale Section 48,377 Auctions 7449 ComicConnect Total 78,654 I have to assume that with millions of comic listings for sale on Ebay, that there must be a proportional market of at least hundreds of thousands of buyers if not even as many as a million. With regard to serious collectors, the ComicLink / ComicConnect numbers lead me to think 100k to 500k. A serious collector being someone who would spend at least $100 on a back issue. That is low for us, but for average people, $100 is a lot of money for a comic book. I get 100k to 500k by assuming that there are 1-5 serious collectors out there for every 1 book on ComicLink or ComicConnect. I wish that there was more to base it on... Another confirmation on the 100k to 500k serious collectors are the 113k GA and 330k SA listings on Ebay. The order of magnitude is about right. That is, suppose serious collectors averaged one SA or GA purchase a week (some a lot more and some a lot less, of course), that would put us at 440k. That still seems about right. Edited March 20, 2019 by CycleGirl tbshay and kav 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
the blob Posted March 20, 2019 Share Posted March 20, 2019 15 hours ago, CycleGirl said: I've been wondering about this quite a lot. There are so many categories of collectors, active, inactive, buyers, traders, silver-age, golden-age, high-end, low-end, etc, etc. A significant proportion of active collectors also sell, so I figure we can at least get an order of magnitude by looking at the number of listings on the main selling sites. So I looked at this. Ebay about 3 million comic listings Golden Age Listings 113,190 Silver Age Listings 330,422 Bronze Age Listings 509,677 Copper Age Listings 335,473 Modern Age 1,920,054 ComicLink For Sale Section 48,377 Auctions 7449 ComicConnect Total 78,654 I have to assume that with millions of comic listings for sale on Ebay, that there must be a proportional market of at least hundreds of thousands of buyers if not even as many as a million. With regard to serious collectors, the ComicLink / ComicConnect numbers lead me to think 100k to 500k. A serious collector being someone who would spend at least $100 on a back issue. That is low for us, but for average people, $100 is a lot of money for a comic book. I get 100k to 500k by assuming that there are 1-5 serious collectors out there for every 1 book on ComicLink or ComicConnect. I wish that there was more to base it on... Another confirmation on the 100k to 500k serious collectors are the 113k GA and 330k SA listings on Ebay. The order of magnitude is about right. That is, suppose serious collectors averaged one SA or GA purchase a week (some a lot more and some a lot less, of course), that would put us at 440k. That still seems about right. Mile High Comics has nearly 200,000 feedback. Koch is over 70.000. I think if you leave 12 feedbacks that doesn't count as 12? I forget. But if you leave feedback for different group purchases months apart, does it count as 2? If MH's figure represents 200,000 custoers, that may give a sense. What I can't remember if years ago when you left 12 feedback it counted as 12. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CycleGirl Posted March 20, 2019 Share Posted March 20, 2019 (edited) 24 minutes ago, the blob said: Mile High Comics has nearly 200,000 feedback. Koch is over 70.000. I think if you leave 12 feedbacks that doesn't count as 12? I forget. But if you leave feedback for different group purchases months apart, does it count as 2? If MH's figure represents 200,000 custoers, that may give a sense. What I can't remember if years ago when you left 12 feedback it counted as 12. That's seems like a meaningful number. I wonder how many customers C'Link has, as well as ComicConnect and Heritage Auctions for comics. I would imagine that a fair percentage of active, serious collectors have interacted with one of those businesses in the last decade.Does anyone know? Edited March 20, 2019 by CycleGirl Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phicks Posted March 20, 2019 Share Posted March 20, 2019 If you are talking about Feedback on eBay, each transaction gets one Feedback. So just one customer could give 12 feedback to the same seller, if they bought from them 12 different times. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
the blob Posted March 20, 2019 Share Posted March 20, 2019 1 hour ago, Phicks said: If you are talking about Feedback on eBay, each transaction gets one Feedback. So just one customer could give 12 feedback to the same seller, if they bought from them 12 different times. I just got 12 feedbacks from 1 buyer and it only upped me 1 feedback? I think. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kav Posted March 20, 2019 Author Share Posted March 20, 2019 (edited) 22 minutes ago, the blob said: I just got 12 feedbacks from 1 buyer and it only upped me 1 feedback? I think. Yep. It has to be a separate purchase paid separately to get a different feedback point. Like if I buy a bunch of books from MCS and then pay for them all, that counts as one feedback. If I then buy another book and pay for it-separate feedback. I believe if you pay for each of the books one by one you can leave 12 separate feedbacks that count. Of course you would pay 12 separate shipping fees unless you squared it with the seller. Edited March 20, 2019 by kav Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CycleGirl Posted March 20, 2019 Share Posted March 20, 2019 (edited) I just looked at the bottom of this page and saw that https://www.facebook.com/CGCcomics/ has 18,666 likes and 18,686 followers. That is probably a (small) fraction of the collecting community. And the group https://www.facebook.com/groups/ComicBookCollecting/ has 296,680 members. Since it is a closed group, there is a tiny bit of effort to join. Edited March 20, 2019 by CycleGirl Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
