I use a lot, and I mean a lot, of clear plastic shoe boxes with lids. 384 total boxes at last count. On the end of each box is a printed label that explains what is in the box and you will see this is vital to my system. A few have several different items in them and are listed as such. Quick visual ease of what is inside is vital for large number of boxes. These boxes are stacked three high and four wide on large shef units bought from Lowes. They have four shelves filled with the shoe box size containers for 48 per unit and two 18 gallon bins on the top shelf. The shoe box holds 30-50 blanks depending on size and the 18 gallon holds up to a few hundred each. The shelves are filled to the brim and there are eight units of them.
I have until now refused to count blanks for fear of being forced to come to grips to my pen blank addiction but here goes. Best guess is north of, well, a lot. Figure 30 per box, times 12 boxes per shelf, times four levels, times eight units. That comes to 11,520, but it might be higher as there are a lot of boxes with more than 30 in them. Of course that does not include the blanks in the 18 gallon bins and there are 15 or 16 of them. These are filled with blanks that I have bought in large quantity over the years like buckeye burl or maple burl or spalted oak or maple. Perhaps 4-5,000 more blanks. Then there is the flat stock that has not been cut up into blanks yet. Or bowl blanks bought with an eye of cutting them into blanks. And do not get into the odd acrylic blanks stacked on their own shelf but they can not be over a hundred total so they do not even need to be counted.
OK call it 15-20,000 pen blanks if you like. But I do not have a problem. I just like blanks. And I do not have too many of them, yet. Perhaps I should include wine stopper blanks which are like fat pen blanks if you want to split hairs. Maybe 3-400 tops. Duck call blanks are similar but I do not have more than 300 of them. Pepper mill blanks are less than 50, so that is not too many. Now if you want to include gun stock blanks I might be in trouble because you could get a lot of blanks out of one of them. I had 300 before I started culling them, not including my secret stash of about fifty really "special" ones and I am sure that number is down to at least 275 by now.
My wife recalls my hobby when I had fifty or less blanks on hand. Ten years is a lifetime in some hobbies. Now understand the out of pocket expense is zero. It, the blank cost has all been paid by sales of pens over the years. If not my stash never would have grown out to this silly level. High number of blanks does make large orders very simple. I frequently get orders for 20 to 175 pens of one type. It becomes a matter of assembly line production and I need 30 to 200 blanks to choose from for some orders. So from that viewpoint I do not have a problem, just a lot of future anticipated orders on hand.