I actually think it was a good thread, I hope the gist of it wasn't lost with the thread name change, but it was nice of mo to moderate his message somewhat.
$20 per month says Rolando--he says roughly--that's almost $250 a year? Wow, [self edited crack here] Seriously though,very much doubt this is the "average" of the paying player. I suppose if you had a cushy desk job and this was just to past the time, ok I could see it. Some people simply would never spend that much on a game (even the $99 price point we used to accept as the norm seem hopelessly high post-ap store) others would find that level of spending would detract from feelings of success and wouldn't do it.
I almost think longevity is more important--some of these dusty old traders have huge piles of voodoo, I expect, cause they just never use any.
A final thought on cards--I always suspect that the "big" spending voodoo hoarders are simply grown up trading card players--pokemon, magic, something like that:)
It would be cool to see some raw data on all this stuff, although I imagine CJ finds that proprietary.