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1954 hidden, but keep in mind that it also include games that I own which got removed from Steam (API no longer reporting them so they become enter-able on Sg unless they are "Previously Won"), owned DLCs and collections containing stuff I already have ;) Generally I do not manually add everything from my lib to hidden list nor do I actively hide bad games (with few exceptions like chauvinistis/homophobic developers or other extreme cases), hy hidden list is not well managed, simply if I see DLC/pack I own in GA (and I tend to always check these) I will hide it, but I will not spend time actively checking every game in GA feed and hiding them off ;)

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And from what i know from group buys (if they still exist due paypal fee system change) people could get whole bundles with tens of titles just for cents and pennies. Which is really cost efficient way to go certainly for collecting. o.o 

there are also stores now which sell shovelware games for pennies, like DIG store ;) And ofcv mentioned freebies. So yeah, I'd argue that getting to 1000 games on Steam could be achieved even under 100$ budget.

These days it's harder to get as good deals as they used to be during days of flash sales

Not sure tbh, obviously less good deals on newer stuff, noone will put newer game at 10 days long big sale, while they could put it on 8h sale, but at the other hand as years go by the games get older and older, and if your game is few years old you are much more likely to put it on deeper sale as it's stopped earning serious money anyway, but you can still get some this way, not to mention hooking people up on a series and maybe they will buy more expensive sequels. From customer standpoint it's obviously worse case, as sales for newer stuff is higher, but from purely collector standpoint (and that's what we are theorethically discussing here. how expensive it is to get X games) there's is no difference, because while the newer stuff is more expensive there is more old cheap stuff now than it used to be in flash-sales era ;) Ofc I mean starting and mid-tier collectors, as for top ones it's obviously not the case as they own all of this old cheaper stuff already ;p

And yeah - there are more bundles now, especially more AAA, AA or premium indies getting bundles, but that's it, cause beside introduction of higher quality buyndles, lower quality bundles stabilized over last few years. real boom was 2-3 years ago, but since then quite a few bundles died, some became less popular (anyone still gives a shit about groupees? and it used to be one of 3 most popular bundle sites) and especially in least popular bundles, like all gogo, box etc, most of games are repeats after repeats. Games getting bundled for 30th time is not really changing much ;)

It's kind of why i'm bit baffled that top guy doesn't have more competition

Like I said - it's probably about the cost. Getting very high may cost you a good few thousands of dollars, but getting to the top is probably requiring hundreds of thousands of dollars - it's riddiculous amount of money, especially for something that is not physical. If you collect cars, art or even action figures - they will keep some kind of value, you can resell them in future, they can be inherited and so on and on, they have real life monetary value. Steam games (especially after removal of gifting system) do not. You cannot resell your collection, it doesn't even belong to you, for all we know Valve can switch off servers next month and you will be left with nothing of value at all. I guess there are not many people willing to invest hundreds of thousands of dollars into something that will not even belong to them, just for the same of competition.