<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=10700511#post10700511 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Bebo77
see thats my big gripe.. the hobbyist who is trying to be a retailer... we dont have the overhead that these "farmers" do ... so why would you charge the same price as them?
its "thinking" like this that makes this hobby sooooo expensive..
Actually most of the time you are buying these high prices are because some LFS got lucky when he went in and cherry picked the weekly shipments and found something cool. He then put a name to it and marks it up.
General mark up on a coral is 100% due to the loss factor that most stores have to cover.
A coral that was picked up and has better colors, or odd colorations is usually named by the LFS and then is marked up 300% plus.
You can go to a store and buy an entire rock of normal colored zoanthids for $40 bucks, for an odd, or vivid coloration you would pay $120+ for the same rock.
It has nothing to do with the farmers overhead, it;s a supply and demand.
If I have a coral that is eye catching and everyone wants a piece of it, then I have to limit the amount I sell or I would be out of a colony, so you sell a piece at a time at an inflated rate.
It isn't just zoanthids, but the multi-colored cloves, chalices, blastos, Acanthestreas, everything. The store typically pays the same price for a lot of it's stock, but marks it up according to it's street value.
And so it's clear, I got into this hobby as a distraction from other things in my life, and I love this hobby. I give away frags of my corals all the time, but if someone really wants a frag of something in my tank that I am not ready to frag yet, I still might....but for a price.
And I am in the process of setting up a farm too. And I currently work in a LFS. So I have seen many sides to this hobby, and it is all about supply and demand.