Is Donald Trump overplaying his hand?

When I mentioned to somebody that I was going to hear Donald Trump make a speech and write a news story about it, I got this response: “I’m tired of Donald Trump.”

Me too.

Not personally. I’ve met him several times, and he can be quite pleasant.

But I’m inclined to think that as the walking manifestation of the most interesting aspect of my beat -- the intersection of real estate and popular culture -- Trump is maxing out. I am OD-ing on his brand.

As I chatted with him this month, before he charged out to make a speech before 7,000 people, he told me he was wearing a Donald Trump suit, a Donald Trump shirt and a Donald Trump tie, and he immediately explained where his branded attire could be purchased. He also has licensed his name to a men’s fragrance.

A week later, I found myself listening to him in the produce section of my grocery store. He was speaking warmly about fabric softener from a video monitor mounted between the red bell peppers and the avocados. He shills, in our living rooms, for Domino’s pizza and Visa cards. We are, of course, in the fourth season of “The Apprentice,” and not long ago he showed up on “Days of Our Lives.”

We have Trump University and Trump get-rich books, Trump gambling and Trump high-rises, Trump bottled water and Trump telephone ring tones.

Is all this necessary?

“I think he needs the money,” said Timothy L. O’Brien, a New York Times business reporter who recently wrote “TrumpNation,” a biography. “You don’t see Warren Buffet and Bill Gates hawking laundry detergent.”

O’Brien said that people familiar with Trump’s bottom line estimate his wealth in the hundreds of millions of dollars -- not, as Trump told the crowd in Rosemont, Ill., recently -- well above the $2.7 billion that Forbes magazine says he’s worth.

Trump, for his part, described O’Brien to the New York Post as a “whack job.” On Thursday his lawyer sent a letter to O’Brien’s publisher, Warner Books, demanding a correction and apology and that it cease distribution of the book because of “defamatory falsehoods.” O’Brien, in an interview, said he stands by the research in his book. But I digress.

I asked a totally nonscientific sampling of a dozen or so people who were waiting to hear him speak if they agreed that we’re getting Trumped-out. They said I was wrong. A typical response:

“He’s real. He’s made it, lost it and made it again,” said Michelle Galli, a real estate agent who came from Merced, Calif., to attend the real estate expo in Rosemont, where Trump was the keynote speaker. “I don’t think he’s overexposed.”

Northwestern University communications professor Irving Rein, who has studied celebrity marketing, told me, in essence, to get over it: Trumpy-ness seems likely to remain with us awhile.

“Trump’s endorsement seems to have far more stretch and reach than most,” Rein said. “It’s not about the person, it’s about us -- about what we seek. Things he exhibits are the things people want, especially people who haven’t made it, which is most people.”

Well, if you say so. Just so long as I don’t have to pay him a royalty for helping me fill this space.