2000 grafts or 2500-3500 grafts? Who is correct? (photos)

You would certainly require more than 2000 grafts for a meaningful transplant. If you undergo 2000 grafts, you would set yourself up for having to commit to having more transplants to avoid looking odd as your hair loss progresses. It is best not to have a transplant at all in that scenario. Given your level of hair loss, the minimum you would need to address the front credible is 3500 grafts. And even at this, you must reconcile to the possibility of needing to do more transplants in the future to catch up with your advancing hair loss. Using the DrUGraft advanced FUE technique, I routinely restore patients with severe baldness to globally using combinations of head and body hair. in my opinion, your head donor appears to be sub optimal and you should seriously consider incorporating body hair to your donor pool if you are looking for a credible looking restoration

Hair transplant surgery is not about "how many grafts" you need, but about how a doctor can match your goals and expectations.In addition one doctor can make 2000 grafts look great while another doctor may make a 3000 graft surgery look awful.  Hair transplant surgery results are not about numbers.Where to "concentrate" placing the grafts is between you and your doctor based on your goals.

It looks like you can get the max amount in one procedure.  The most I'll do is around 3-3,500, so it looks like you should be good with the max!

Your are going to need thousands if you are looking for good density! Do NOT rely on photos but rather the actual seeing patients with your degree of balding and density of hair before proceeding. If density is what you want and lack of texture change of our hair and less cost you should look into the Fleming-Mayer Flap procedure we developed 35 years ago. This is not done by technicians but by very experienced plastic surgeons with this technique. We do both types of hair replacement and once patients see both they can choose.I have patients I did 25-30 years ago who are sending their sons now to us to have The FMF  done.

I believe your concerns about density are well founded.  Usually to build up the frontal forelock/hairline requires between 2500-3000 grafts.  To graft into the crown would be more grafts, so for most patients in your hair loss classification we suggest to focus on the frontal area, and if desired the second procedure can focus on the back.  There is an old adage in hair surgery that you don't graft in the back until you are happy with the front.

The number of grafts required for covering the bald scalp will depend upon what type of density do you want after the surgery, what type of hair style do you want to keep, how much area do you want to cover, etc.. And how many grafts can be extracted will depend upon the skill of the surgeon, your requirement as well as how do you want to keep your hair on the back side. Since, there are a lot of factors which come into consideration, it will be better to have a face to face consultation in detail regarding all the aspects rather than just the number of grafts..

Number of grafts has always been an issue from the point of patients.On the other hand there are even much more important topics.How your donor site will look like after the surgery? How many cm2 area will be covered with which density?An so on.Your donor seem to let an experience surgeon harvest approximately 3000 grafts and this amount will help to achieve work on 90-100 cm2 bald area.

If you are not looking for very low density, then 2,000 - 2,500 grafts is not going to provide you with coverage. If you are looking for a full hairline with mid scalp coverage at a good density with grafts in the crown, you will be looking at a larger procedure of 4,000 grafts. 

Based on pictures alone, 2000 could be a good estimate, but so could 2500-3500. There's really no way of knowing without being able to see you in person to get a better understanding of what you hope to achieve, to analyze the thickness of your hair, etc. It depends more on the final look than the pure number, two different doctors could both get you really good results while using a significantly different number of grafts.

For your type of case, you will need over 3500 grafts to achieved a good density. You should have 2 surgeries. First surgery to make a good frontal hair line and cover the frontal part and the second to cover vertex and crown.
You are a patient that can benefit from a Multi-unit hair graft transplant. In my Clinic we do Multi-units using NHC Bundles which can be a better surgery for you.