because I do not have them…
Then you do not have the evidence to back up your claim.
and we know for another fact that the 5e numbers should be multiplied by about 4, and then your 1e numbers are dwarfed
We do not know that for a fact, it is supported by analysis, but that is not the same as fact and to be clear that analysis suggests that the number is anywhere between 25% and 40% which is not the same as multiplying by 4. It would be multiplying by between 2.5 and 4 and your argument is much stronger if it is 4 than if it is 2.5.
The numbers we have account for about 20% of the 1E products published (not including Dragon magazine).
Even if I use your number of 20k per adventure (which what I have read online speculates they average 50k-150k) that 1.4M in adventures alone. If it is the $100k number it is 7M.
Then you have all the boxed sets and hardcovers not accounted for. Even if they only manage 3M in total that is 50%.
and you have none that it did, yet you keep insisting on it…
And you have none of it either yet you keep insisting 5E sold more.
At a fundamental level you can not prove that 5E sold more than 1E if you don't know how much 1E sold.
Further we can settle this easily by including Dragon magazine.
because selling 10 books at $5 is easier than selling 10 nooks at $50,
Of course it is. That is the main reason 1E sold more. It is the main reason I own more 1E product than 5E product when I purchase almost everything WOTC prints for 5E and purchased comparatively less for 1E.
and you focus on headcount over revenue for no real reason other than that it benefits you.
I am focused on head count because that is what was in my original post that I am being relentlessly challanged on.
Sold more in print. Pretty straightforward.
Also while we can focus on revenue, I don't know that it will make up the difference because the Hardcovers sold for a lot more in real dollars than they sell for now and the soft covers cost way more per page.
Selling just 2 30 page adventures that cost $7 each in 1985 is more than selling one hardcover costing $30 in 2024.
The hardcovers that sold for $19 in the 80s would cost $55 today, almost twice as much.
If we focus on revenue that is going to eat into that "4x" number you keep touting pretty quickly.
We don't have numbers on the adventures which were the cheapest product (other than the magazine). The average product we have numbers for on 1E probably ran about $14 and we have 10M of them we know of on that list ($140M in 1985 or 407M today) and that is without numbers for half the hardcovers or any of the adventures.
Most modules sold so little that combined they sold less than the 5e PHB, and for each one that sold well there is a 5e one that outsold
Do you have evidence of this?
in your dreams, the average sales were more like 25k units
Source please. You can say this over and over, but unless you have a source it is just conjecture
I assume you took the 250k from my Dark Sun number, that was not per adventure, that was all adventures combined (peak year)...
That was 2E which sold A LOT LESS than 1E did. I would agree with 20k per adventure for 2E although I will point out that 250k divided across 6 adventures is over 40k per adventure and this was during the era D&D was declining. If adventures were posting 40k per year in 2E they would have been doing a lot more than that 10 years earlier.
Although I did misunderstand you post, this still strongly refutes your 20k per adventure number.