well I think what I can tell is that the membership on this board is mostly under 35 and for those of us who are older we can see a cultural difference in that the % of collectors in your generation is considerably lower than previous generations due to the different activities that are available to you, that weren't to us.
We really had to entertain ourselves. So when I was a kid, all my neighbors either collected coins, or stamps, or comic books, baseball cards, gi joes, hotwheels cars etc. This is not the same today where things like i-Pods, flat screen tv, gaming computers, X-box etc have taken the place of the kind of collecting that my generation did.. and I think that is the simple of it
Of course there is also the lack of interest in history to the younger generations that we were really plugged into. For instance, when I was 9 years old in 1966, I was collecting 1940s Batman & Spirit comics because I wanted to read the back issues and I knew all the history of comic strips, I watched silent films & like older films better than new ones etc. Moreover, as stated above, all my friends had these interests as well. Today, anything older than 15 minutes is passe.. We didn't feel that way back then..
Waterproof
