Statistically, How Rare is the Black Card?
This post is sort of a food for thought post. I was interested to know exactly how rare the Centurion card really is, so I did a little bit of research with the US Census department. Any of the population and household numbers I got from Census.gov and from CNN.
There are roughly 19,000-20,000 Black cards in the United States. I am not sure on an exact number as it is difficult to get, but we do know that it has become a little easier to get it over the last year or so, really increasing this number. The number I am really interested in, if I could ever get it would be the cancellation rate of black cardmembers.
- The estimated August 2008 civilian population for the US is 303,588,896. Assuming 20,000 Centurion members, roughly 0.00658% of the population has a black card.
- There are an estimated 111,162,259 households in the US, roughly 0.0179% of households have a black card.
- There are 9,200,000 households in the US worth over $1M (excluding primary home), which is approx 8.27% of the US households. Again assuming 20k black cardmembers, roughly 0.217% of millionaire households have a black card.
- There are approx 1,190,000 households in the US worth over $5M, which is about 1.07% of US households. Roughly 1.7% of households over $5M have black cards.
You are more likely to die from Brain cancer than you are to be in a household that has a black card. I just read the brain cancer statistic, I had to add it is. Look on the bright side though, you are more likely to be in a household worth more than $5M than have a black card. I would rather have that any day.
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Comments
the black card is supposed to be the ELITE, but many of the hotels dont care and dont know what to do when they see one. Forget about upgrades in new york. Customer service at amex is not what it was, but i still pay over 40k a month to amex and have NEVER been late in over 10 years. SO WHAT DO I REALLY GAIN BY HAVING ONE???????
The stats are going down. Me and my 2 partners just recently cancelled our cards. I can’t justify haveing one in not so good times. For us it’s just not worth it. Service has gone down hill. We all no amex did let go of a lot of people.
You have to take into that there are 12-20 million illegal immigrants in this country. And a additional 40 million people who are on green cards in this country and it’s AMEX Policy (according to my relatives) not to give them CC unless they were in had a LONG and good standing payment history with AMEX in their home country. So thats 52-60 million people.
So with those numbers subtract in from that 330 million and you get the amount of people who are eligible for AmEx Cards