tnyr5
Active member
I won't give my two cents since I can't find them at the moment, but in short,
$10, $20 and $30 frags of brightly colored stuff = fair
$40 and $50 frags of absolutely amazingly colored stuff or XXL frags of bright stuff = usually fair
$100 and up for anything but a colony of bright stuff = not fair
I have no problem with selling, since it makes things available to people who don't yet have anything "cool" to trade, but let's be realistic here, folks.
Like disturbed, I'm with a store and have the privilege of looking behind the retail prices to see what things actually cost. Please note that most of my comments are directed at the online vendors who show up at swaps rather than the swappers. I would say 99% of the people in our club are just looking for a little something to cover running costs and/or money to buy new corals which can widen the gene pool of our clubs frag selection. They work hard to keep their corals healthy, and hard work deserves to be rewarded. That being said (and I'll use chalices as an example because it's the first and in my opinion worst offender that came to mind)...
If you think for one second that those chalice frags you see plastered all over the internet cost 300 dollars an eye because the owners paid an arm and a leg for them, think again. 100 percent markup? HAH! That single eye frag is selling for about twice as much money as the seller paid for the entire COLONY, yes, I'm serious. Now consider the fact that a typical chalice colony sizes about 4 to 6 inches with at least 30 eyes, usually quite a bit more. That's 9 THOUSAND dollars profit on a 150 dollar coral. For those of you who don't want to do the math, that's 6 THOUSAND percent. Here's another little secret, full colonies of chalices are actually pretty fast growing. I can easily get 1/2" a month on my chalice colonies. Those frags are small for a reason, 1 eye frags live, but they grow very slowly, ensuring that there won't be any competition for quite a while. Just bumping that size up to the diameter of a quarter and 2 eyes cuts the growout time to a colony in half. Chalices also pretty darn easy to get, at least from what I've seen. If a store wanted to, it could get a mummy eye type chalice every week and a watermelon type somewhere around once a month. I'm not saying there aren't some truly uncommon ones, but those aren't the ones i see being sold everywhere, either. Don't judge rarity by how it's implied, judge it by availability. Don't you think it's kind of odd that EVERY SINGLE ONLINE VENDOR has watermelon chalice frags for sale?...
Obviously I'm using an extreme example here, and some people do buy the 300 dollar eyes and grow them into colonies and sell them for less than half of what they paid (MUAH, love you), but the fact remains that most of these corals are not grown out with love and care from tiny pieces like the sellers would want you to believe. If the goal is to maximize profits, it does not make sense to buy a coral that's already very expensive and then invest more money by growing it out. A much better solution is to buy a bunch of cheap un-named corals, keep them just long enough to attain bright color, cut them up ( save just enough of the parents that they continue to grow fast and produce more frags), inflate the prices into the stratosphere to create instant demand (the best way to make people want something is to make it appear unattainable), and then sell them all off as your own "brand" of coral. Turn something common into something rare by convincing people they can't get it cheaply anymore. In the words of David Wong, it's called "Forced ARtificial Scarcity" or F.A.R.T.S. And when you're sniffing the F.A.R.T.S., someone's got you by the a$$hole.
I travel to frag swaps for hundreds of miles in every direction. Do you know what people talk about? Ideas? Advice to newbies? New thoughts on how to keep difficult corals? No, PRICES! Every swap I've been to lately has been nothing but one giant running sentence of who-sold-what-coral-for-how-much-and-how-soon-can-I-do-the-same. It isn't even intelligent or stimulating conversation. People used to talk about CONCEPTS. They used to talk about INNOVATION. They used to sit down and LISTEN to the guest speaker's presentation instead of going right on with their sales (I've been guilty of not following this one once or twice too). When people are content to just sell and resell the easy stuff and no longer grow as aquarists, that's when the hobby REALLY dies. If you want to really justify a high selling price, don't go looking for a coral nobody has because they haven't bought it yet, go looking for a coral that nobody has because we don't know how to keep it yet, read what's been achieved so far, and try to build on it. High praise to the pioneers in the non-photosynthetic realm for this one.
Finally, we really need to get the pay it forward program moving faster. I sincerely hope the reason it hasn't taken off is not because people don't want to be bothered with something that doesn't turn a profit. I also stand behind Dan that membership should be required. The main reason for that was to deter outsiders from running off with free frags to sell to the members of their own clubs and also to boost our membership. I've paid up my dues and I have some things in growout already. When they are big enough, I'll be giving them out through the PIF program ( and it'll be good stuff, too).
$10, $20 and $30 frags of brightly colored stuff = fair
$40 and $50 frags of absolutely amazingly colored stuff or XXL frags of bright stuff = usually fair
$100 and up for anything but a colony of bright stuff = not fair
I have no problem with selling, since it makes things available to people who don't yet have anything "cool" to trade, but let's be realistic here, folks.
Like disturbed, I'm with a store and have the privilege of looking behind the retail prices to see what things actually cost. Please note that most of my comments are directed at the online vendors who show up at swaps rather than the swappers. I would say 99% of the people in our club are just looking for a little something to cover running costs and/or money to buy new corals which can widen the gene pool of our clubs frag selection. They work hard to keep their corals healthy, and hard work deserves to be rewarded. That being said (and I'll use chalices as an example because it's the first and in my opinion worst offender that came to mind)...
If you think for one second that those chalice frags you see plastered all over the internet cost 300 dollars an eye because the owners paid an arm and a leg for them, think again. 100 percent markup? HAH! That single eye frag is selling for about twice as much money as the seller paid for the entire COLONY, yes, I'm serious. Now consider the fact that a typical chalice colony sizes about 4 to 6 inches with at least 30 eyes, usually quite a bit more. That's 9 THOUSAND dollars profit on a 150 dollar coral. For those of you who don't want to do the math, that's 6 THOUSAND percent. Here's another little secret, full colonies of chalices are actually pretty fast growing. I can easily get 1/2" a month on my chalice colonies. Those frags are small for a reason, 1 eye frags live, but they grow very slowly, ensuring that there won't be any competition for quite a while. Just bumping that size up to the diameter of a quarter and 2 eyes cuts the growout time to a colony in half. Chalices also pretty darn easy to get, at least from what I've seen. If a store wanted to, it could get a mummy eye type chalice every week and a watermelon type somewhere around once a month. I'm not saying there aren't some truly uncommon ones, but those aren't the ones i see being sold everywhere, either. Don't judge rarity by how it's implied, judge it by availability. Don't you think it's kind of odd that EVERY SINGLE ONLINE VENDOR has watermelon chalice frags for sale?...
Obviously I'm using an extreme example here, and some people do buy the 300 dollar eyes and grow them into colonies and sell them for less than half of what they paid (MUAH, love you), but the fact remains that most of these corals are not grown out with love and care from tiny pieces like the sellers would want you to believe. If the goal is to maximize profits, it does not make sense to buy a coral that's already very expensive and then invest more money by growing it out. A much better solution is to buy a bunch of cheap un-named corals, keep them just long enough to attain bright color, cut them up ( save just enough of the parents that they continue to grow fast and produce more frags), inflate the prices into the stratosphere to create instant demand (the best way to make people want something is to make it appear unattainable), and then sell them all off as your own "brand" of coral. Turn something common into something rare by convincing people they can't get it cheaply anymore. In the words of David Wong, it's called "Forced ARtificial Scarcity" or F.A.R.T.S. And when you're sniffing the F.A.R.T.S., someone's got you by the a$$hole.
I travel to frag swaps for hundreds of miles in every direction. Do you know what people talk about? Ideas? Advice to newbies? New thoughts on how to keep difficult corals? No, PRICES! Every swap I've been to lately has been nothing but one giant running sentence of who-sold-what-coral-for-how-much-and-how-soon-can-I-do-the-same. It isn't even intelligent or stimulating conversation. People used to talk about CONCEPTS. They used to talk about INNOVATION. They used to sit down and LISTEN to the guest speaker's presentation instead of going right on with their sales (I've been guilty of not following this one once or twice too). When people are content to just sell and resell the easy stuff and no longer grow as aquarists, that's when the hobby REALLY dies. If you want to really justify a high selling price, don't go looking for a coral nobody has because they haven't bought it yet, go looking for a coral that nobody has because we don't know how to keep it yet, read what's been achieved so far, and try to build on it. High praise to the pioneers in the non-photosynthetic realm for this one.
Finally, we really need to get the pay it forward program moving faster. I sincerely hope the reason it hasn't taken off is not because people don't want to be bothered with something that doesn't turn a profit. I also stand behind Dan that membership should be required. The main reason for that was to deter outsiders from running off with free frags to sell to the members of their own clubs and also to boost our membership. I've paid up my dues and I have some things in growout already. When they are big enough, I'll be giving them out through the PIF program ( and it'll be good stuff, too).
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