you never ask anything easy hey chris?

bbarsh wrote:By active collector I am including the whole span of the casual collector to the completist.

I would agree with your 10k number if it includes those who've ever actively sought out multiple old-school RPG items (as well as 1.5k for the currently active). If we are talking about everyone who keeps their old books from when they were younger, or who purchases a title or two out of personal nostalgia, then the worldwide number must be in the tens of millions.

I think Bill's numbers are in the ballpark.  My gut is that the active collectors number would be a little higher, maybe 2000-3000, but overall I agree.  My guess is based on viewing a lot of RPG forums, the numbers that some kickstarters have done (especially ones that seem much more likely to have collector appeal), and piggybacking on Bill's thoughts.  

OK - I think my original estimate was too high. But I agree with Bill, I think the number is on reflection below the 10k mark perhaps between 4k and 5k if looking at active collectors . As the Historian points out, look at recent Kickstarters as perhaps a good barometer of the current collection market. Rappan Athuk attracted over 1,000 pledges - this has to represent quite a high percentage of collectors given that this particular product has been released in two previous incarnations (and yes, I did subscribe to this KS in earnest!) so your everyday gamer would perhaps not subscribe. The Swords & Wizadry KS had over 500 pledges. Moving away from actual gaming material you have the Elmore book attracting over 2,100 pledges and then there is the D&D documentary with over 3,500 pledges.

I was actually thinking about the recent Guide To Glorantha - I think around 1300 backers.  Big expensive hardcovers - sure there are a a lot of RQ/Glorantha fans, but a good chunk of that has to be collectors.

xRalphx wrote:I would think that Rappan Athuk's success was not so much collectors, but Paizo plugging the product. The higher pledges, sure those were most likely collectors.
But I wouldn't underestimate Paizo's/Pathfinder's loyal fanbase. Even though the previous incarnations were for the 3rd edition ruleset and Pathfinder is not that different, this was the first (official) Pathfinder release of the product.
Maybe for the S&W version, you could say that it was mostly collectors. Or at the very least a higher percentage of collectors then for the Pathfinder version.

I think you're on to something here, Ralph:  if you take estimates of the total # of players, then work downward via web forums memberships numbers and then KS support figures (perhaps with some subdivisions in there, based on the total #s supporting vs. the #s supporting at "collector" levels, which will vary from project to project*), then to convention attendees, that starts to give you some ratios for # of players and their level of commitment/investment in their hobby/collections, with my logic working like this:

total estimated players > players interested enough to be active in the fan community > fans interested enough to sink $$$ into supporting specific projects  > fans willing to travel large distances to attend conventions

If you then compare those ratios to those for other, larger and more mainstream hobbies like remote-control enthusiasts, Star Trek and Star Wars fans, baseball card collectors, etc., that may be a good way to validate the assumptions in our perceptions of the "levels of collectors" (so to speak), and from there calibrate some better figures.

* Neil Gaiman and his wife Amanda Palmer had a very nice joint KS awhile ago that attracted 3873 backers but only 46 of them supported at the $500 or more levels (a 1.19% support rate):  http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ama ... nda-palmer and similarly, Amanda's new LP KS raised over $1.1M with 24,883 backers, but only 184 of the backers were at the $500+ level (a 0.74% support rate).

If we define 'collectors' to be people, well, like us, then why don't we start with the numbers from this site?   I might suggest taking the number of unique visitors  to the Acaeum annually, mulitplied by some factor to account for non-Acaeum users.  I would think the number of RPG collectors who *never* visit here would be small.

Quite a lot in France, that's sure, but only a few are registered here.
We have a lot of collectors for recent games, or french games...

Another question... how long do you remain a collector ?
Many have disappeared from this board or ebay.
Is their collection complete, is the flame is extinguished ?...

le Rahib wrote:Quite a lot in France, that's sure, but only a few are registered here.
We have a lot of collectors for recent games, or french games...

Another question... how long do you remain a collector ?
Many have disappeared from this board or ebay.
Is their collection complete, is the flame is extinguished ?...

Quite a few collectors have come and gone over the years, I know I am about 30% as keen as I was 10 years ago.  Part of that is the stuff I am currently missing rarely comes up for auction or offer and it is becoming very pricey.  I used to sell quite a bit on ebay to suppliment my cravings, now with 3 kids Ebay has been reduced to once in a while.