Most popular Lepidoptera

What do you mean ? Popular among non collecting people ? Then :
Red butterfly
Blue butterfly
Yellow butterfly
( Common people don't know the names )

Among collectors and popularity ranked on insectnet you find these groups of people :

Butterflies:

1st group : The Papilionidae collectors, they like Papilionidae mainly Papilio, Achillides, Parnassius and of course Ornithoptera! There is two kind of people in this group, those with money, and those that gave their money for their collection. Papilionidae is as I would say price wise on of the most widespread families, so there is something for every budget.

2nd group : The Charaxinae collectors. This groups splits up again into Agrias collectors, people whose pockets surpass those of Papilionidae collectors and then the Prepona and Charaxes collectors which again have a pretty wide price range but don't surpass 5000€ as far as I got told.

3rd group: The big game hunters, they like any family as long as the colors are nice and the butterfly large.

4th group: the real hunters, they simply enjoy collecting themselves with their net, and take anything.

5th group: The big Pieridae collectors they split up into two very popular groups. The Delias/Catasticta collectors and the Colias collectors. The Delias collectors, they spoil all their specimen by mounting them upside down. The Colias collectors, they have been at the source of many sleepless nights of Thanos.

6th group: The Morphidae collectors, they like Morphos, again a more expensive group but also a lot of not so expensive species. They keep the Blandin books as their holy bible.

7th group: The Lycaenidae collectors, a very passionate group that really needs this passion as those little butterflies can drive you nuts when monting them.

8th group: The Heliconius collectors. Those poor people will never be able to identify their collection as it seems that these butterflies went trough a natural witness-protection program.

Moth:

1st group: The Saturniidae collectors, they think a moth is only a moth when it has a wingspan of at least 2 inch. They constantly battle the bad shape of their sought after species with their purse.

2nd group: The Catocala hunters, an exclusively North American group as collecting the 10 species in Europe is not a very long task.

3rd group: The Sphingidae collectors, I can't really comment here as I don't understand that group myself

4th group: The big game hunters: They catch anything large and themselves they always keep a deadly siringue in their pockets

5th group: the real hunters, they simply enjoy collecting themselves with their net, and take anything.

6th group: The Arctiidae collectors, they have risen mafia like structures of people to get the best specimen.

7th group: The Noctuidae collectors, their homes fill up with boxes and boxes of dead fluffy moth that they hope to mount one day but they know exactly they will never be able to.

Microlepidoptera

These people seem related to leap years, every 4 years one of them find his way to insectnet.

Any comment above on the individual groups has been exaggerated and should not be taken up as offense.

Nicely said nomihoudai......and an interesting read I might add.

One group you 'may' have left out was the "Mutt Group" for those of us who fall into several of your categories:)

Fantastic reply Claude, gave me a real giggle, I like the big red and blue butterfly the best, I,m afraid I fall into Bills Mutt category although most of my collection is papilionidae and nymphalidae (the ones I can afford anyway) with small series of the other families, though I am trying to build up a British moth reference collection which may take a while with so many macros, so many of them are so similar I might have to take up examining genetalia.

You forgot Delias/Catasticta collectors. We are many !

Among us, some skillful scientists, some crazy adventurers and some wealthy collectors ! A nice little tribe !

Many American, European, Japanese and Australian guys.

Thanks guys for the replies.

And thanks 'nomihoudai' for that fairly extensive thing. - Not sure what it has to do on the topic of popular Lepidoptera. I was really asking what collectors consider popular.
I certainly agree with your comment on Lycanidae.

Did you compose those lines, just as you wrote it?

I think I'd be in groups;
BUTTERFLIES: ''4rd'', 7th. MOTHS: 1st, 3rd and 5th.

Again, thanks people.

Actually, to me, Lycaenidae are monsters. Try mounting micro-moths with 10 millimeter or less wing spans. And then try to do it when you're on the verge of needing bi-focal lenses. To me that is the real challenge. Besides, I collect all families of moths in Illinois.
Jeff Prill