Poll Results - women versus men in scripophily - part 1 Interaction

Do women and men collect in a similar way ? This question was the main motivation to do a poll, or rather a survey, about the differences or similarities between women and men in scripophily.

original size of detail : 1cm x 1cm
scan resolution : 300 dpi
no scaling

The survey counted 36 participants, which is almost half the number of participants in the previous poll, see here. However, in contrast to the preceding one, this poll consisted of not one but twenty-two questions ! Some interesting observations could be made and I had to group, discuss and publish the survey results that were more or less related to each other into three different parts :

• part 1 Interaction
• part 2 Preferences
• part 3 Influences and areas of interest

Let's get on with part 1.

A ratio of 1 to 11

In total 36 persons have participated including 33 men and 3 women. I must thank both sides for their brave contributions! Yes, a ratio of 1/11 in favor of the men, but I am pleasantly surprised with the attendance of the female participants.

Question : How many male collectors do you know ?
Every participant knows at least one other male collector. Almost two-thirds even know at least eleven male collectors and this applies to the men and the women. Several participants actually know more than a hundred male collectors. If you are a member of a large scripophily association, or active as a professional dealer or if you are simply extremely busy in social networks on the Internet, then this seems possible.

double-click image to enlarge

Question : How many female collectors do you know ?
About half of the men know at least 1 female collector, but the other half of the men do not know any women collectors (yet). It is time getting to know each other, isn't it ? One male participant seems to know eleven or more female collectors, and this can also be said for one female participant. Great. The little group of women that participated all know at least one other female collector. Unfortunately no one participating seems to have met more than 100 different female collectors.

Question : In the past 12 months, where did you obtain new additions for your collection ?
Aha, interesting question. Important here is the fact that our participants were allowed to select more than one answer. Online auction platforms such as eBay is the most choosen answer, immediately followed by the answer Classical auctions. To a lesser extent, but still popular were the answers Collector bourses and fairs and, why not, From fellow collectors.  In other words, bourses are events when collectors obtain a significant part of their collections. Bourses are also places were collectors meet collector friends. Our participants found to a far lesser degree new material in Web shops. Without cause or not ?

Two male participants found no new entries for their collection for the past 12 months. Two persons indicated to have Other sources and both of them further specified that source as a 'retail shop'.

Question : Who is easier to bargain with ?
In general the male participants prefer ... men to bargain with.  And so do the women! Who can explain this?

The FUN question 

I'll end this first part of the review with the last, optional, question of the survey : What advice can you give to the opposite sex ? Meant as a joke question, most participants choose one of the options at their own risk and I'll leave the interpretation of the result in full trust to the reader.

Part two and three will be published in August, see here, and September 2013, see there.

F.L.

PS : If you want to find out more about the images of the man and woman used in this article, then read further below.

double-click image to enlarge

The images shown in this article are details from the 1857 share of La Salvadora, a Spanish insurance company. The share shows four scenes of a man and a woman in a rather dramatic situation. You should have a look at the entire certificate here. Other scenes will be shown in more detail in the follow up articles of this poll review.

Many shares feature men and women in their vignettes. However, in most cases the figures are crudely drawn, or are depicted as gods and goddesses without any human traits and emotions. This certainly does not apply to this share. The designer, unknown, managed to draw characters expressing hope, despair, reassurance, and exhaustion, all with great realism. In all four scenes the light comes from the upper left direction, used by the artist as a spotlight. The light lets you look first at the expressive faces and reaching and clinging arms. The light further creates shadows on the skin, the muscles and the creases of the clothing, which gives each scene extra depth and dynamics. The shadows in turn emphasize the areas exposed to the light and become equally important. I don't know if the artist did this on purpose, but the legs of the men seem to be a bit taller than we may expect them to be. This introduces a little disproportion which adds extra tension to the pictures. For sure, a tremendous amount of observation and artistic skills are necessary to accomplish this.  

A wonderful design that was superbly engraved by Antonio Roca y Sallent.