Split Rock and Marblehead are good examples. Suppose that those GLOWs were the intended standard for GLOWs. And suppose that the intended standard for LEs was something like
last year's Yerba Buena or even 1998's Cape Florida. Is there enough difference there to be distinctive? I think so. Tim makes a good point though. HLs would have to be content with that distinction. Another wildcard.

In a previous post Tim estimated the numbers of collectors in various categories.



I think those numbers are high. Not being a statistician and applying just some basic math to Tim numbers, if there are 1100 hard core collectors, that's 1100 of each release that is essentially pre-sold. So for a release of say 7,000 (a level about where some of the pre-mature retirements are) there are only 5,900 left for the active, six per year collector. That being the case, somewhere between two and three years after release there ought to be no more pieces on the dealer shelves. (2 years x 3500 collectors = 7,000 which is more than the 5,900 that is left for purchase after the hard core collector's get theirs) From what I see at R@R, that's not the case. There are lots of 1998 releases still around in early 2002. I don't think that there is one regular 1998 release that R@R can't provide a lead for. Here in early 2002, it appears to me that the real numbers of hard core and active collectors, by Tim's definitions, might be half of those numbers.

There are almost 900 registrations here on the Forums. Sean has pointed out that not all of them are for active or hard core collectors. What is the subset of active posters, in a forum other than the Marketplace? Given the length of time that this Forum has been active and the number of opportunities to folks to participate in a thread, let's define 'active poster' as more than 150 posts outside of the Marketplace. John, can you give us a number?

Really a thought provoking discussion. Let's keep it rolling. Maybe with a few new voices?

Rick