Your theory is sound is principle, Meddle, but in practice the opposite was the case. For example, the first edition (1961) comprised only ten A4 pages of text and three of photos. Even the second edition (1963) (at least, the 1979 reprint) comprised only sixteen A3 pages of text with four of photos (including the back cover). However it had grown to 85 pages by the fourth edition (1974) and by the ninth edition (1984) the page count had increased to 221. I suspect that this was, in the main, due to an increased interest in ‘wrecks’ and a far greater number of ‘relics’ being preserved by the mid eighties. I also suspect that back in 1963, there were far more aeronautical ‘wrecks and relics’ in existence than get a mention in the first edition (which deliberately excluded all Spitfires on the ground that these had previously been covered in a Society publication). Probably it did no more than scratch the surface and, perhaps, engender interest in searching out, reporting and recording qualifying entrants. But as the years went by, more people sought out the extant ‘wrecks and relics’ and communicated their data to the publisher of the book (initially this was the Merseyside Aviation Society), causing the content to increase exponentially, edition by edition.