Well said, Mirof!
I agree, well over 1000,000; indeed I would stick my neck out and say, approaching 500,000 world wide.
I have followed this hobby for a very long time, not just in my homeland, but in America, Europe and Asia.
Glad to read LaRRy's comments about Chicago, but the same is happening across Europe and Asia. If you want to feel the pulse of the hobby, go to Kulmbach!
Every country in Europe has an indigenous Toy Soldier industry, where everything is done "in house", not a Chinese artizan in sight!! And a lot of this stuff is very good! Unfortunately, very little of it is seen on this forum.
Earlier this year we had Andy Neilson in town for our TS Dinner. His after dinner speech was all about numbers. The numbers of his production in the last 10 or so years. It would have required 10,000 "Multimillionaires" to have covered just KnC's production alone!!
Another example: the first figure for several of the "part works" of recent times, has seen 1,000,000 copies made!
Also, never forget that TS Collecting, unlike Model Trains, is full of "Closet Collectors" many of whom NEVER "come out" Just read the stats from this forum on "lookers" as opposed to Members who are online, for example.
What do you think??
Happy Collecting.
Oberstinhaber.