My reasoning with this number is this:

For every active member, I would consider that there are 5 - 10 non active members who collect chips (be it a handful to full blown collectors). So for middle of the road, I would say there are 7 per active member (these would include Sellers who do nothing but pick up chips to sell).

So if there are 1200 active members and 7 per active member there would be 8,400 non active members...so that would be around 9,600 collectors. Then I would add the deceased members whose families still has their collection of chips (which would make up around 200 - 400 more collector).

I'm not taking in the factor of collectors of home sets (using sets from old casinos), Harley Davidsons chip collectors, Silver Strike or Token Collectors, or the person who has picked up a random chip over the years.

So John, I don't think 12,000 is too far out of line.