Antique whistles – need a lot ??

How many whistles do you have ?? That's a question many collectors ask – why do you think ??

Could indicate how long they have been collecting I suppose.

Then again it might reflect how much they must know by now.

Or even what kind of display they may be shooting for.

Maybe even what is motivating or holding them back ??

But really, how many whistles does one need to be a student of whistles ??

All I can say is from what we have found, not as many as one would thinlk. After ten years of collecting, selling off and studying whistles we took inventory and we are just over 1000 whistles. Yet we have been able to write over 50 articles now. A far cry from the 5000 whistles that it took to write three books.

Certainly no where near 10,000 whistles. So what does it take ?? That's up to you, but at least here is a bench mark. One apparently can really get into this hobby with just a few hundred. In fact, being very serious — it still took years to get to 500 and then crawling up over the 1000 mark. We would have loved to stay at about 750 but very hard to bring in the variety for the articles and then have a reference collection for referral for more articles and to answer questions we receive.

So what can we conclude ?? Perhaps as little as one hundred to two hundred whistles would be all it took to learn and enjoy this hobby. Now that's a rather inexpensive hobby, cause whistles don't have to be expensive. Sure some are, but take the 84 bucks GSW that just sold for over 500 dollars on eBay. It is early, but not critical for study. One can learn most of it by finding a 131 Barr street address on almsot the same whistle for 50 dollars.  Just a different stamp is all.

All in all a pretty inexpensive hobby…….