While there are approximately 500 Brass Bridge Blue Triangles, it is unknown how many were Bath perforated and how many were Wincanton perforated. Neither is it known how many of the Baths were of the rat-nibbled variety. In those early days of 2004 no-one thought that the stamps would take off like they did, or that anyone would take any notice of the perforation differences, so records were not kept.

Knowing that the stamp sheets were A4 sized, the size of the stamps, and the arrangement of the triangular stamps from the pre-perforating mini-sheet, it is very likely that there were 56 stamps per sheet. This has since been confirmed by an extremely reliable source. There would be 4 pairs of stamps, base facing base, across the sheet, and 7 such rows down the sheet. This would leave room for a wide enough selvedge on each side. Thus 10 sheets, in theory, would supply more than enough for the 10 sports based on one per sheet. But more sports were needed. One was made available at a charity auction, one is in the custody of the British Library, and more than one have been extra special gifts. We know that not all Blue Triangle sheets for perforating were printed at the same time. The stamps were dribbled out slowly. It is quite likely that one or two sheets may have had extra Sports to ensure sufficient numbers for all requirements without the need for further sheet printing. Indeed, this seems to have been the case with a part sheet found, Bath perforated, that contained more than one sport. In fact much of the original perforating session produced unsatisfactory stamps, and particularly hard hit were the sports. They were positioned at a corner of the sheet and were easily torn.

So, extra sheets were required, some with extra sports per sheet. It has been said that there were 10 sheets in total. I think this should be interpreted as 10 sheets worth of stamps, and that still requires some qualification. As previously said, Terry has a full sheet, while there is a block of 16 stamps somewhere in the USA. This leaves 10 sports and 478 common stamps. Additional to this is a half sheet sent to the American publishers of Going Postal, begging the question that this is the half to the one mentioned above. I think not, based purely on when they were likely to have been prepared. However, this highlights uncertainty on how many Blues were printed. What may be more certain is that around 480 were popped into LBEs for collectors.

 

An attempt to do a countdown from 500 was made on the Discworld Stamps forum as the stamps were found. Apart from being a bit naive to think that everyone who collected the stamps was a forum member and that they would register ownership, the countdown jumps quite a bit. On the 9th Feb 2006 there were 322 left to find. This was revised without explanation to 84 later that day. It eventually counted down to the final one on 19th June. Nine more were declared in 2009! Six of the Sports seemed to be accounted for. There will still be, even now, unopened LBEs and Dragon Sanctuary covers with stamps from that period. Most likely the figure for how many were yet to be put into LBEs was misinterpreted as how many were left to be found.
Later threads for more recent $5 triangles have counted upwards as collectors declared them. However, only 129 of the Hubwards Gate triangle and just 50 of the Least Gate have been owned up to, suggesting that both the excitement is going out of such activity and so the whereabouts of most examples is unknown.