quote:

Originally posted by btlfannz:
To find out how many collectors there are a good place to start must be right here. OK Harris, how many NSU Card Talk members are there??

As Wolfie pointed out, there 4556 registered Card Talk members. I do not regularly prune our ranks though so many of these members are no longer visiting. Some may have visited just one time. Some never even verify their email address.

We have no hard and fast figures on the market size but we have always thought it is smaller then many think.

The other thing is that some will collect a specific set or two without moving on to others. Do you consider this type of buyer a "card collector"? This is kind of like the age old question of what is a promo card? Or what do you consider to be a master set?

LOL, master sets were easy in the 90's. Now it's just two complicated.

I try to collect ALL X-Files and Marvel that's on cardboard. Any size, any country, anything. UD put an end to my Marvel collecting for the most part.

Alot of art and comic stuff. But I didn't touch any CZE comic stuff until that last set (DC Women).

Some Star Wars, mostly art. Basically my wife and I stay away from TV and movie cards.

Got into TWD, but CZE will probably turn me away.

Just as I was feeling really down on cards, Breygent came out with Grimm. It was fun. I think I actually have all the promos once I receive one more. A mini-master set, open a couple boxes, an AP sketch, and bought a few prop and autograph cards.

quote:

Originally posted by webjon:

quote:

Originally posted by jane:
I seem to lose a lot of auctions though. I think the number might be bigger than what we think(although still not huge or nearly as big as sports cards )

I've been buying a lot of Game of Thrones autographs lately. . . which started me thinking about this. . . between buying on eBay and boxes and things I have duplicates of a lot of autographs. . . sometimes lots of copies of main characters autographs that are limited to around 500 copies. . . These autographs are only bringing around $30 on eBay. . . It seems to be something that absurdly limited should sell for more than $30. . . so it got me thinking . . . how many people are collecting GoT? How many collectors are there in general. . . and how many dealers. Geez, I mean -- according to Wikipedia GoT averaged over 14,000,000 viewers last year. . . 500 autos distributed for a show that had 14 million viewers is a paltry number.

I think part of the problem is people don't know that trading cards with autographs, etc. exist. I can't tell you how many times I've trotted out my collection to my amazed friends. Not that I've converted any of them , but not a lot of people even know that these exist.

WebJon's original question was how many non-sport card collecto9rs are there. The blindingly obvious answer is Nothing Like Enough!!

Just in passing though I'd love to know where we rank on a list of:
1.Stamp Collectors
2.Coin Collectors
3.Comic Collectors
4.Sport Card Collectors
5.Cigarette Card Collectors

My (totally unqualified) guess would be,that this is the present ranking by numbers of collectors and that we would fall somewhere between 4 & 5
What do you think?

quote:

Originally posted by H_Toser:
As Wolfie pointed out, there 4556 registered Card Talk members. I do not regularly prune our ranks though so many of these members are no longer visiting. Some may have visited just one time. Some never even verify their email address.

Definitely a good point of data. . . as has already been pointed out many people are guests as well. . . but it's a good jumping off point -- at least for conversation. . .

quote:

Originally posted by H_Toser:
The other thing is that some will collect a specific set or two without moving on to others. Do you consider this type of buyer a "card collector"? This is kind of like the age old question of what is a promo card? Or what do you consider to be a master set?

For me, I guess I'd consider you a card collector if you purchase cards of any kind over a specified period -- probably a year. . . Although the tricky thing about that are all the moms who buy a pack of cards at mass merchants for their children that end up getting destroyed -- which is awesome. . . but I don't know that you can consider these card collectors. . .

quote:

Originally posted by webjon:
A commercial would be awesome, but terribly expensive. . . a strong social media campaign could be very effective and free. . .

I was thinking about this last night. . . there is a terrible Achilles heel to any sort of advertising on TV/radio/etc or social media. . . In order to have effective advertising you need to have an easy way to purchase the cards. . . That channel simply doesn't exist. . .

It could work, of course, if the manufacturers would sell product on their own pages (some do), or (probably better from a consumer standpoint) if product was regularly available on a site like Amazon.

quote:

how many non-sport card collectors are there? And how many dealers?

More than 15 years ago in my city. We have 4 stores related to collectibles (trading cards or comics stuff or both). Right now I believe there is still 1 collectible store, but it is comic book/sci-fi stuff. I don't believe they have trading cards.

Years ago in the '90s, I know a lot of people locally collecting and trading the sport cards. The non-sport card collectors were rare because many of the products were comic book related.

After that moment, I met some people that in some point or other after knowing I collect cards. They tell me. They collected cards (sport, non-sport, game cards) in some point of their live, but one day just stopped. In my opinion more than 50% of these persons were just following a momentary boom style fever. Also there was a point that technically every thing related to collectibles just stopped in Puerto Rico. Then one day, the boom restarted thanks to the Anime stuff and the new wave of super heroes movies.

Now just looking eBay as seller or buyer. I can tell you there is a big presence of collectors and dealers in Internet. For example as seller I found people just contacting me and buying cards because they collect Gambit, Storm, etc. cards because is stuff related to the character.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: kane1,

Not sure if this data is of value, but since I was working on it just today....
Legends of ST is 10 years old. I ordered 50 sets. During that time, I ahd both added and subtracted from my order.
I placed my 10th ANniv order today and it was for 55 sets (I think-math is HARD) People come and people go....Box orders are way down from when I started, master set orders are up. I miss a lot of people I've known over the years and I've gained a lot of new friends

quote:

Originally posted by webjon:

That's great info. . . more than I would have thought over a 4 day window. . . nearly 500 unique visitors a day. . .

Surprised the heck out of me too. (Technical stuff may follow that most people won't care about.) The "counter" I used for years just gave me a gross count, which I always took with a grain of salt because you get a lot of random hits from people googling practically everything. (In the trading card universe, there are titles that match any subject. But people rarely click the link if they see a list.) The stats program I just discovered at my ISP subtracts out traffic from "robots, worms, or replies with special HTTP status codes." I just turned it on October 22. Through 9 days, 3984 unique visitors, 6455 visits, 24K page views. The "viewed" traffic (minus the bots) was 44K hits and the "not viewed" traffic was 31K.

What I'd really like to know is whether people do web searches on random subjects, then *discover* that there are trading cards, and join the hobby. It would give my life new meaning.

One interesting note: the number of visits per day was consistent, but on the 27th when we talked about it the # of pages viewed per visit took a brief uptick.

Internet traffic aside, I'm more impressed by the "942" number of credited contributors. Thanks, all!

Very interesting. . . thanks for posting the statistics. . . It is interesting that the number of unique visitors per day hasn't really dropped off over the 9 day period. Do you know what is considered a unique visitor? ie. If I visit today, and then again 24 hours later am I 2 unique visitors (assuming the same IP address)?

If your site is getting that many non-collectors you may want to consider adding some pictures of cards to each page (not that you need more stuff to do, obviously). . .

The concept of Jon not being unique boggles the mind! They do it with IP addresses, so you wouldn't be a unique visitor unless you use a different internet connection. It will be interesting to see that number after a month or a year.

As for pictures, it might wait until I abandon the day job. Every new set has new levels of pesky inserts that need to be researched and confirmed, and the manufacturers haven't realized they ought to send me a master set of every release.

Earlier (pre eBay) there were rights issues with posting too many photos and scans and I hoped the cardmakers would provide useful web links. But I like what Amalia has always done, including a sample image for every set. Again in the old days, you had to pay extra for the bandwidth that would have been required. Maybe I'll set up a scanning station when I build my trading card laboratory ...

quote:

Originally posted by allender:
The concept of Jon not being unique boggles the mind! They do it with IP addresses, so you wouldn't be a unique visitor unless you use a different internet connection.

Interesting. . . It has to reset at some point -- it won't keep an IP as a 'unique visitor' only once. I am pretty sure the tool I use to analyze my web traffic looks only at unique visitors on a calendar day. . . So if you visit my site at 11:59 PM and again at 12:00 AM -- that's 2 unique visitors according to the logs. . . despite not even being a unique web session. If it didn't reset regularly eventually the number of unique visitors would decrease drastically.

Scanning is a big task for sure. . . Although I'm sure many people would be happy to contribute loads of scans once you get to the point that you can take them.

quote:

Originally posted by Raven:
I think there are very few non-sport dealers.

The Wrapper has dozens of non-sport dealers.

quote:

Originally posted by Bill Mullins:

quote:

Originally posted by Raven:
I think there are very few non-sport dealers.

The Wrapper has dozens of non-sport dealers.

Well I was talking about exclusively non-sport card dealers that I actually ran into at shows back in the day. There are several sources that I go to now from contacts here at Card Talk and also in eBay transactions over the years. Of course many of those dealers also buy and sell sportscards, so you have to decide what camp they are really in.

Anyway, I have a question for you Bill. I have never read the Wrapper, but I have heard it mentioned from time to time, just never looked into it. The only publication I ever used for my non-sport collection is NSU, and that started because of the price guide, like everyone else.

So, is the Wrapper worthwhile for a collector to subscribe? Is there something in there about non-sport cards that is more detailed or more covered than what you find in NSU? I am not interested in just ads for products or services. I'm not trying to replace NSU either , I would read both.

I'm just wondering if it is any good and how many people here also get the Wrapper?

quote:

Originally posted by webjon:
Interesting. . . It has to reset at some point -- it won't keep an IP as a 'unique visitor' only once. I am pretty sure the tool I use to analyze my web traffic looks only at unique visitors on a calendar day. . . So if you visit my site at 11:59 PM and again at 12:00 AM -- that's 2 unique visitors according to the logs. . . despite not even being a unique web session. If it didn't reset regularly eventually the number of unique visitors would decrease drastically.

It turns out that the tool does it for a whole month! We'll see what a full 30 days does; I guess a month is about double a week, even if people stop by only to see what's new. The documentatikon give hints on how you can download access logs and analyze them yourself.

quote:

A unique visitor is a person or computer (host) that has made at least 1 hit on 1 page of your web site during the current period shown by the report. If this user makes several visits during this period, it is counted only once. Visitors are tracked by IP address, so if multiple users are accessing your site from the same IP (such as a home or office network), they will be counted as a single unique visitor.
The period shown by AWStats reports is by default the current month.

And Lynne, you might be pleased to note that the most common search string used to find it is "star trek card checklists".

quote:

Originally posted by Raven:
So, is the Wrapper worthwhile for a collector to subscribe? Is there something in there about non-sport cards that is more detailed or more covered than what you find in NSU? I am not interested in just ads for products or services. I'm not trying to replace NSU either , I would read both.

I'm just wondering if it is any good and how many people here also get the Wrapper?

Me me!

The Wrapper is definitely different from NSU and you won't see much overlap. The Wrapper is aimed at hard-core collectors and especially collectors of older sets. It's a mix of articles and ads, including classifieds listing card #s available and wanted over the last century. I'd call it more of a "community hosted by chief correspondent Les."

It hasn't been updated in a couple of years, but check out the Master Index of Articles. There's plenty of lore nobody but the most engaged has heard about, and some of the ads are as interesting as the articles.

In the context of this discussion thread, I'd almost say that there isn't a huge overlap of the people who push old cardboard and read The Wrapper, and the people who speculate about sketch cards and bonus inserts in the main topics of Card Talk. Wrapper people are more likely to show up at the Philly Show than at Comic-Con.

quote:

Originally posted by Raven:

I'm just wondering if it is any good and how many people here also get the Wrapper?

The Wrapper is fantastic if you are interested in the subject matter. If you are curious I'd strongly suggest you hit up the website and get a sample issue for 2 bucks: http://www.thewrappermagazine.com/

I haven't read it in a long time, but I used to subscribe -- when I was reading it the coverage followed old and obscure sets exclusively. I am not sure if that has changed.

Jon

quote:

Originally posted by allender:
And Lynne, you might be pleased to note that the most common search string used to find it is "star trek card checklists".

Of course, cause Star Trek is the best!!

You reminded me..the search engine I use, used to email me a list of the top 10 searches people did every week. Made for funny reading sometimes, but it doesn't do that anymore

My thanks to allender and webjon for the info on the Wrapper. I came late to the non-sport card party and only have a couple of cards of a truly vintage nature, so I guess that's why I never got into the Wrapper. I think I might try getting that $2 issue though, just to see it.