Do you think this frag is worth $200?

[laugh]

$0.02 is to much for this opinion. JK you are right anything is worth what someone is willing to pay for it. If the price is too high buy something else. What I don't like is the exotic names, extreme close ups under super actinic lighting jacking the price up of regular zoas that were $10 a frag last year to $100 a frag.

 

[heckeng]

$0.02 is to much for this opinion. JK you are right anything is worth what someone is willing to pay for it. If the price is too high buy something else. What I don't like is the exotic names, extreme close ups under super actinic lighting jacking the price up of regular zoas that were $10 a frag last year to $100 a frag.

Yeah, I agree on that, and $0.02 may indeed be too much :fish2:

 

[Kreeger1]

Found out it sold so I guess the answer is yes

 

[HaroldT]

It's a good looking morph but i wouldnt pay $200 for it.

 

[SIR PATRICK]

This thread has been an extremely interesting read.

What I think this all boils down to is supply vs. demand. Sure, there are all types of Zoas everywhere. But, can you get this variety anywhere else? Is it a common strain? Is it a desirable coloration?

All these things will affect a person's desire to own them. If you don't like this coloration or something else about it, don't buy it. If you want nice polyps, I think you have to pay for them unless you are just extremely lucky and somebody gives them to you. Where I am, I can buy brown boring zoas all day long for $5-$10 per frag all day long, but it is hard to find any neat looking polyps that I would actually want to display. I have therefore, been willing to pay more for nicer specimens in other shops several hours away.

I don't think you should diss the seller just because he has put a high price on his zoas. If somebody was selling some other desirable commodity, and they were charging a premium price for it, that doesn't mean that the person is a schiester, just that they believe the value of it is higher than you do.

If $200 is too high, how about $100? If that is too high, how about $25? $5? Where is the line drawn that something is too high or "fair". Why not make people just give everybody else free frags? If you remove the reward of fragging nice colonies, you remove the desire for anybody to frag their zoas. If I can get the same $$ for all of my frags, I'm only going to frag the one that grows the fastest in my tank--brown zoas it is!

Just my $0.02

In my opinion, The price of collecting, shipping, and possibly even advertising, along with a little tossed in for aquaculturing, if it happens, minus a bit more for losses, divided by the number of polyps collected, with a modest mark up depending on color/varient, desirability and availability would be a start at drawing a line on pricing.

Anything over $20/polyp, with this point of veiw, is highway robbery at its finest, for the nicest, most desirable polyp you will ever see.

Before the hype of course......

People tend to forget, or just dont know, that colonies of these high priced, "high end" polyps cost someone very little for an entire colony at one point down the line....

$200.....lol!!!

Cant blame them for trying, but you can blame them for blatently trying to rip someone off, and take advantage of those who dont know better.

 

[SIR PATRICK]

Found out it sold so I guess the answer is yes

I think the real answer is someone didnt know better, and got took for a bunch of $$$.

Or

The owner of the polyp had a freind buy it, to try to set a "Market Value" of this polyp, in order to make even more! Common practice, happens all the time.

 

[Kbra84]

I wouldn't say so. But some people are into $500 chalices the size of dimes...

 

[strout]

Yes, they are worth $200 I see polyps for sell on the online sites and in this forum all the time $100 even $200 per polyp. These are pretty nice looking polyps and there looks to be 7 or 8 polyps on the frag, so yes they are worth $200 that comes out to $27 per polyp if there were 7 polyp on the frag, good deal to my way of thinking. Would I pay that much, well I would like to say no but I can't. I am in a grow out at the moment we bought a three polyp frag for $100, we will all get 2 polyps after the grow out also in another grow out, we bought 1 polyp for $100 and will each receive 1 polyp after the grow out. That's just the way it is in the hobby at the moment and I don't see that changing anytime soon. After the (at the moment) high $$ polyp gets into everyone's tank, the bottom falls out on the price of those polyps until the next (at the moment)corals comes out. It is what it is

 

[SoFloReefer]

Yes, they are worth $200 I see polyps for sell on the online sites and in this forum all the time $100 even $200 per polyp. These are pretty nice looking polyps and there looks to be 7 or 8 polyps on the frag, so yes they are worth $200 that comes out to $27 per polyp if there were 7 polyp on the frag, good deal to my way of thinking. Would I pay that much, well I would like to say no but I can't. I am in a grow out at the moment we bought a three polyp frag for $100, we will all get 2 polyps after the grow out also in another grow out, we bought 1 polyp for $100 and will each receive 1 polyp after the grow out. That's just the way it is in the hobby at the moment and I don't see that changing anytime soon. After the (at the moment) high $$ polyp gets into everyone's tank, the bottom falls out on the price of those polyps until the next (at the moment)corals comes out. It is what it is

Grow out isn't getting 2 or 3 polyps. Most people who have been in the hobby for a while don't consider something a colony unless its has dozens and dozens of polyps. I see two or three polyps floating in my water column and I think to myself "hmm ok, might be interesting to see where it attachs". These things grow in mats of tens of thousands in the wild. Just because someone takes a colony of a few hundred polyps and chops off one or two polyps at a time, and sells the freshly glued polyps for an outrageous price, does not mean that is the true value. Like I said before, if you are willing to spend $100-$200 on a few polyps, myself, and others on this forum, will sell you a frag pack that will blow your socks off.

 

[strout]

Grow out isn't getting 2 or 3 polyps. Most people who have been in the hobby for a while don't consider something a colony unless its has dozens and dozens of polyps. I see two or three polyps floating in my water column and I think to myself "hmm ok, might be interesting to see where it attachs". These things grow in mats of tens of thousands in the wild. Just because someone takes a colony of a few hundred polyps and chops off one or two polyps at a time, and sells the freshly glued polyps for an outrageous price, does not mean that is the true value. Like I said before, if you are willing to spend $100-$200 on a few polyps, myself, and others on this forum, will sell you a frag pack that will blow your socks off.

I kinda, Respectfully disagree, See it all the time in this forum, members go to together, buy a one eye chalice frag of the latest and greatest, grow it out to how ever many eyes and chop it up and everyone gets a piece, that's a grow out. Say you buy a coral in a group buy, 10 eyes or 10 polyps for a grand, split it up and everyone gets a eye or polyp for $100, the true value to you is $100 the true value to the seller of the coral you bought from is $1000.00 It is what it is, its worth only as much as someone will pay you for it. I agree that you could sell me a frag pack that would blow my socks off, but if I want a polyp of, say a Purple Hornet for my tank, and you don't have one, the frag pack, even though it would look nice in my tank, still wouldn't have the Purple Hornet. I would have to go to where I could find it, pay what they want for it and that's what the value would be to me, even if the price drops the next week to half of what I had paid for it. While the polyp is in my tank, it is worth nothing, it only has a value if I decide to sell. Kinda like my sister, she remodeled her kitchen, and told me it raised the value of her house. It is only worth X amount of $$ if you decide to sell in the mean time her taxes get raised but she gets to use a nice kitchen. Like others have said, its worth only what someone will pay and right now in this hobby, there are plenty that will pay.

 

[laugh]

Sometimes people have more $$ than they do sense.

 

[650-IS350]

Sometimes people have more $$ than they do sense

. that I truly believe whole heartily

 

[SoFloReefer]

$1000 is more than my whole system cost. I think I'm going to start chopping my my corals because apparently I have $1,000,000 worth of single polyp frags.

 

[strout]

lol You know I am right though, They had that Chalice out a few months back, Miami something or another, like 3 grand for a one eye frag, he couldn't sell them fast enough and had a waiting list to get them.

 

[SoFloReefer]

My cousin just called me up and told me that there is a colony of a few hundred polyps waiting for me in his tank. I will be offering $200 polyps soon.....


I think I just won the lottery:spin3:

 

[scionreefing]

Could use some help trying to determine the value of this zoanthid that is being offered up by a fellow reefer. According to the owner it is a morph that has grown from a single polyp within his reef. It looks to have 10-12 adult polyps as well as some babies. Please let me know your thoughts, thanks!

They were selling these in Memphis for 30 bucks.

Raffle grabber

 

[135salt]

Looks like a cross between a campfire and my Knockout's. Nice but there are very similar ones for a lot less.

 

[deadmeat]

They were not worth 200, sad someone fell into that trap...

I wanted to jump in and speak my mind about the whole supply and demand thought as it has been mentioned slightly. I'm just wondering how long after my comments are made it takes a supplier to rebut. Just please overlook me if I'm hijacking a thread but since it has been mentioned before I wanted to explain from my point of view why I agree with Mucho and 650 about overpricing.

My few observations...
1. the hobby really began blowing up between 8-10 years ago as aquarium hardware and understanding advanced <-- this made it easier for anyone who could buy the equipment and mix saltwater to become an instant "reefer" Tons of early reefers started garage businesses during this time, which in turn became brick-n-mortar later.
2. when I started, colonies are what we bought... I did not go into a store and find a "frag". In fact I seen frags for the first time in retail 6-7years ago. I understand it hit other areas of the country/world faster, but that is my experience. In those times what everyone calls a mini colony now, would have been what us fellow reefers traded amongst each other as a frag. I still chuckle at the phrase "mini colony" to this day. But the hobby as a whole has become a trading circuit of these miniature pieces of coral for reasons I will conclude further down.
3. When I started the hobby my thoughts were...what can I grow? What can I keep alive? How big will it get? etc... (in the beginning brown coral was beautiful) To this day I still feel the same way, I'm a grower not a shower. I collect and do not Idolize. 13 years have passed, I have 700G total in reef systems with over 100 diff specimens in my collection ( I stopped counting at 100 it was just silly to keep going ) and do not have a show tank! I do not retail but do trade in for supplies on occasion.
4. CITES is a big deal (enough said) and I also feel like the coral trade has a business model similar to the cocaine trade...

So as a reefer remembering when I could buy a softball size birds nest for 40 bucks and take a risk of it dying in my tanks, I only felt bad when I killed the organism due to my lack of husbandry skills. The 40 bucks hurt but was a mere shadow for the pain caused by loosing a coral. Losses like that taught me that there is always room for improvement. As years went by and "frags" became popular with more variety it definately has driven the price of a "old skewl" colony up in price. For several years now I just do frag swapping etc instead of chasing down colonies. My wallet cannot suffer high-end damages at the expense of my pleasure. When I got into frags I really started learning more... I could get more variety for less with less risk. ($5 frags was my entry level into the market) My losses then may have been 20 percent. These days experience puts me at less than 1 percent.

^ I think I just got side tracked.

So a much larger group of reefers came into being 4-5 years ago as the garage hobbiest of the past grew into the brick-n-mortar stores. These new reefers missed out on creating the technology that made reefing possible and had to find their foothold into aqua history. So to be cool they could show their buddies they had named a coral. Uh Oh! I watched my $5 frags bloat in value! So we get street names instead of scientific names with exact points of origin more often now.

Here is how I want to summarize all this experience with some more recent research I have been into. In my everlasting quest to collect more specimens and achieve world domination as a collector I wanted to return to the glory days of colony purchases vice frags. But truely understood at that point how much damage has occurred at that point. I wanted to know why colonies are so expensive, where did my 40 buck colonies go?

I began by finding the big distributors in Cali and researching their supply chain. I have went as far as researching customs and CITES requirements to handle my own importation of Mari-cultured livestock.
Ok here is what I found. CITES only allows x amount of importation of certain species each year. (for good reason) Most of us understand all this and why.

But I did find where the money is made under the guise of losses, shipping, importation fees, investment, etc. The 120 dollar colony I see in the store now was purchased by the distributor for 1% of that cost. Here is the big incentive for their investment return. They go to a small Indo pacific Island that they can get permits to export from and find a fishing village struggling to survive. The women are taught to frag large colonies (basketball size) mount them on disks and grow them out in the Ocean. This gives the village supplemental income... These Baseball to grapefruit sized colonies are sold to the distributor for 60cents to $1.06 in alot of cases. Ah, why can we not achieve such a low end cost on our purchases? They choose allot of places without telecommunications, you can only strike up these deals by getting you own permits to import and Island hopping at great expense to get them. One importer I know of receives 4 tons per week from an indo-pacific station with multiple collection sites. They own the whole thing from chartered shipping to handling import fees etc. <-- starting to sound like the cartel? Yes with fees and shipping they now have the expensive amount of maybe 5 dollars into that piece even after shipping losses I'm guessing. So why is it so expensive? Have you ever seen the multimillion dollar facilities these guys built in California? Imagine the cost in utility, land taxes, investor payoffs, the list could crush your mind with reason. So now cost is 20 bucks per colony? but he is going to wholesale for 40 - 60 bucks because he wants to turn a profit and take into account replacing coral losses due to shipping mishaps and DOA's...
Now retail wants a piece of the pie and cannot make a profit with this over priced colony sitting in his tanks waiting on money bags to walk in... So its time to frag it... The coral he wanted to sell for 100-120 dollars just became worth 200-250 in frags. (sounds like someone at the street level is stepping on my cocaine.) I do not like to think many brick and mortar do this, I believe it is much more common with online sales such as eBay.

This has already become too long and I could rant all day so I will stop at this point allowing you to draw your own conclusions... My apologies to the large distributors and brick and mortar I compared to the drug cartel. (It was an analogy) I'm also sorry that facilities have had to become so big to house all the coral that the newest generation hyped with names. I'm also sorry that a few greedy retailers have further driven prices up because hobbyists gave you a reason to sell them designer named coral. Everyone is a business man trying to make a living... Ha! its all the hobbyists fault! Why didn't I see this coming?

Thanks,
Tom

I'm not afraid to share resources from my research to a few interested...

 

[A. Grandis]

Like it or not: the bottom line to spend lots for frags is to show off.
That's the only explanation I have for MOST of those who pay that much money for zoas/corals.
If they have the money and want to use it they could buy maybe 10 small frags for the same amount.
The value of the tank is not in how much money you spent, but rather in how much you learn and spend time with your system.
Many times we see pictures of ugly tanks with rich frags.
They miss the point in having the system.

BUT we still respect their choice. We should. It's their money.
The sad part is that the market goes crazy and all the other people have to play the game.
Truth said.

Grandis.

 

[aidan0217]

The colors are awesome... 200 pesos