[pekkelien]

has someone any idea how many smurf collectors are on the world ?
i dont have a clue
i gues a miljoen orso

[Gerda]

I guess it would depend on how you define "collector" If by collector you mean someone who searches for variations, promos and rares and sees the smurf as something of limitless value then I would guess the number to be less than a million. If you consider the people who may have a handfull or more smurfs from there childhood that they can not part with for centemental value than I would guess the number to be more than a million.
gerda

[TYK86]

I really dont know how many smurf collecters their are.
but i think that almost everybody has at least 1 smurf or more.

[lordsmurf]

Most people I've met in North America have no clue what a SMURF is, especially if they are younger than about 25-30 years old. Older than 40 is usually because they had kids in the 80s.

[Tojo]

I don't suppose we'll ever know.

There must be more than 650 though as that's the number of members here plus the number of active members at Mushroom Village (not allowing for collectors who are members of both).

I would expect that most people who own smurfs don't actually collect them as such. On the other hand how would you define a collection? More than 10 smurfs? more than 50? more than 1 smurf bought per week?

I would expect as a guess a figure of something like 500 000, but I'm probably way off the mark.

[TYK86]

I probally think that if you ask someone in Holland and I also think in germany, france and belgium what a smurf is, they almost all know.
smurfs have been very poppular in holland.

[Tojo]

yeees...

but that dosn't mean that they're all collectors though.

My first memory of smurfs was from the National Garages promotions in the mid 1970's (although my parents never bought petrol there so I never got any stickers & stuff ). I bought my first smurfs in the mid 1980's (2 super smurfs) & have only this year started collecting more or less seriously (er probably not very seriously actually ).

so although millions of people own smurfs, are they really collectors?

[Syd Smurf]

Interesting question and I can guarantee there are more than 378 although I always lose count after that or get distracted and then have to start again.

Actually I agree with Gerda that if you include people that just have smurfs then you would be over a million...but if you are talking serious collectors (or people who are still actively collecting) then you are probably looking around half of that like Tojo says (500,000). Maybe if you counted every country in the world and times it by 50 then maybe you would get a figure that may be close.

Dyar

PS - I think one day I would like to get a smurf meet happening that would move from country to country and be held maybe every 2 years or something like that.

[DrunkSmurf]

Actually, there's 573,490 smurf collectors in the world, though Gustav in South Africa has split personality and maintains two collections (neither of which his third persona knows about).

But seriously, I consider myself a smurf collector (over 200 and counting). Yet, I'm not an *elite* collector. I'm content to have one of each rather than seek the variations (though that may change once I have one of each--and no more hobby!). I suspect that the number of elite collectors is relatively small, though obviously present enough to fuel the fakes assembly lines that seem to come out of ebay Germany.