I don't see the bed in there....

Spare DRUM room perhaps?DOH

If it's your aim to try to count, I can account for a 4-piece 60s Ludwig kit and (if you consider these vintage) an 80s Tama Superstar comprised of 4 toms and a bass drum.

So the calculation is quite simple:

9 that I personally own + X =worlds entire collection of vintage drums

I can't believe after 4 pages of posts no one else came up with this simple way to solve it. Glad I could help!

This is a hard question to answer Company's like Ludwig,Rogers etc. Made hundred's of thousands of drums, Not only Under the Brands name, but under unknown company names. One Company that was known for this was Leedy drums the made lots of drums G Way company and strupe Co. and many more. I had a collection of Leedy timbales largest in the world 100 sets. I have sold many of them today i have kept only 7. I also found the same timbales under the Name Ludwig and Ludwig made by Leedy drums yet under the Ludwig brand.

And still today company's will make drums for other company under different names as a tax write off. One company today Latin percussion , Toca , Mienl Ludwig all make drums under different names which will be sorted out in the future by collectors.

Just saw this thread and wanted to comment for peace of old rare vintage drum mind. Sleep well...this one was saved proper.

Thats a wonderful thing you did. It is great that one got saved. It is sad for all those that wont get saved.

Billions & billions

...lol...

I still have a Ludwig slotted Coliseum in chrome o wood w/a "super hoop " on top

Okay, I have watched this long enough and have to supply everyone with the answer, or at the very least the formula that you will need. First you have to take the total number of munufacturers as of 1993. I use the antiques rules and don't consider it vintage until 20 years and antique at 40 so to put it into perspective, for many of us here, if the drums were manufactured while we were young then they are vintage and if they were manufactured when we were born then they are antiques. For a very few of us here though if the drums were manufactured when we were born then there are a few museums that might be interested in talking to you. Back on track, tack the total number of manufacturers known and then multiply that times Pi and then you must multiply that by the population of Illiinois and then subtract the 617 kits that and various other drums that Slingerland has stored in his undiclosed location. Once you have that number you must multiply 1993 by 1900 and then subtract that number form your original number to calculate the number of kits destroyed by fire, tossed in the garbage by aunt Edna or used as kindling in a local bon fire and you will arrive at your number.

Not that we finally have that straightened out I want to weigh in on the other discussion that seems to have stemmed in this thread as well regarding drum values. Unlike many here I go beyond the drum set era and also restore vintage marching drums as well and have handled drums dating back to pre Revolutionary war. There are those drums out there that are fetching large dollar amounts that do need to be taken into consideration like the vintage Black Beauty's / Ludwig Deluxe's, The extremely rare Slingerland Black Beauty (My personal unicorn) and several others. Like guitars though it is all about the pedigree and provenance attached to said instrument. A kit owned by Buddy or Krupa or Ringo is going to sell for far more than the exact same kit that was not owned by that drummer just like a Les Paul guitar owned by Les Paul would sell for more than the same vintage guitar not owned by him. I have heard rumors of what some of Ringo's drum heads have sold for but those are few and far between. Yes there are vintage guitars that are selling for 5 digit prices but those are few and far between.

I for one hope that prices on some stuff don't go too much higher because it makes them harder to sell. Lets take the Ringo kits as a prime example. You could by a 4 piece 1969 Ludwig kit in a blue sparkle or other very common color in some cases for a few hundred bucks but if you take that same kit in the same condition with the black oyster pear finish then there are guys selling them for ten times what you would pay for the same exact kit in a different color. Seeing some of these kits hitting the $4,500.00 in some cases limits the number of potential buyers that would be interested in the kit. Many young players could not afford to drop that kind of money on a vintage kit. If more vintage kits were fetching these prices then we would ostracize most of our potential markets because the number of people in the world with that kind of disposable income is small. I have had a few gems pass through my hands in the past several years, some that have even ended up in museums, and those drums are wonderful to come across and when I am able to find buyers fr them they help to keep me in business and fund several other projects and pay some bills.

The reasonably priced kits are what keep this hobby going and what allow others after us to appreciate the instruments that we grew up with and have grown to love over the years.

For the record, there are some great Civil War era drums with provenance that trace the drums back to a specific military unit or specific battle that do pop up every once in a while and some some of these drums do fetch what others would consider to be vintage guitar prices.

As for the drum strippers, I try and avoid them and there are few guys on line and specifically on Ebay that I will never buy from because they don't do any of us any good. I see guys that strip down brand new kits and part them out and the cost to put them back together just makes it not worth it. I am fortunate enough that I am able to take many old shells and convert them to rope tension drums where there is a market and make a profit on them but I wouldn't be able to make that some profit or any profit at all trying to piece together some of these drums that have been stripped unless I jacked up the prices and then i would have to wait for a buyer if I could find one. It is a business and a hobby for me and I love nothing more than to put an old drum together and make it sound again, especially if it is a drum that hasn't been played in many years, there is a certain satisfaction to bringing these drums back to life. Sorry for rambling on.

As a newbie, I have been chewing on this question from this old thread and been doing some research on the economics of collectibles. Per a study I saw, it seems collectibles value are tied to the generation who first became enamored with those items and so rise and fall with the aging of the generation; peaking as the generation attains its highest buying power in terms of disposable income and the ability to attain that thing they wanted most when they were young. Look at the booming muscle car and guitar markets as recent examples, but also consider the antique furniture market which I have seen devastated in our quaint corner of PA in recent years due to shifts in taste across the buying generation(shifts away from the formal and glorious Chippendale styles and Ethan Allen type pieces- surely these business failures were accelerated by the recession but the trends were in place prior to 2008).

So it seems with the golden age of drumming as we know it being 1920's to 1970's, and the rise of drumming through the baby boom generation (thanks to Ringo, Keith, John etc...) the last generation to truly be massively invested would be the Generation X or Y. But I suspect that as with most things economic, it is the Baby Boomer generation driving the trends and thus as they pass, so too will inflated prices as more pieces become available to a dwindling pool of buyers. Given this, it may be time to buy fine Tama, Yamaha and Pearl kits in bulk cheaply to stock up for those later generation's desires if investment is your driver....or not!

I could be wrong...

Cheers gents, I am learning a lot from the forum.

I dont think I would be running out to buy Tama, Pearl or any other new kits at this time but then again Im an old fuddy duddy.