I got a rant to put out there, so fair warning but I'm open to hearing opinions

thatmanMIKEson

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Stop feeding into the demand, simple economics no demand = increased supply.

These corals keep growing, if no one can sell them the price would have no where to go but down, as long as people are paying these high prices, they will always have high prices.

Someone out there is paying these crazy prices...its not me who is it!!!!!
 

deerhunter06

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The only problem I have with this is it constantly drives the prices higher and higher. Who here remembers when hammer and frogspawn were 25 dollars a head. And when you could go to a show and spend 100 bucks and feel like wow actually made a dent in my tank. Now if you have someone who goes and spends 1k on all the hammers and sells them for 100 dollars a head how's that help the hobby. I mean yeah the lfs made what he wanted and sees them resold for a 100 a head and says like a smart business person, "gee, I can sell mine for 50 a head and make double" so he sells them for 50 and then the same thing happens but the price inflates to 150 on the big business end with a new name change. It goes like this untill it reaches the highest price the market can sustain. It just hurts the people who are new to the hobby and even discourages people from joining. And hurts people who don't have the money to pay market cap prices.
As I said no one is trying to help the hobby, everyone is trying to rip someone off. Just the way of this greedy world anymore. Can’t be happy with profiting 5 bucks gotta squeeze people for allllll their worth. It’s everywhere it’s business 101 anymore.
 

KrisReef

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I love that everyone loves collecting corals, but I saw something at Reefstock that really, really bothered me. I specific high end coral vendor was buying stuff off of other vendors in order to fleece the crowds by making up names and abusing their reputation as a high end seller in order to make money and proportedly sell things as "rare" or "unique" just because you have a really reputable brand behind you.

This is not okay and I hope you know who you are if you are reading this.

I will not be purchasing from you again and upon asking a local LFS this is not the first year they have done this so I can only believe this behavior is happening at other shows as well.

For the record, it was not Top Shelf Aquatics. They had a good selection and I got some more dragon tongue. It WAS
another nationally recognized brand.

Buying a coral at a show is one thing, but to use your reputation and good brand name to screw over hobbyists is another. I'm pretty upset about it but I just won't ever give them my money.

Not only that but they had a habit of trying to tell customers including myself, "awwww man there's some rare stuff in there" only for me to see them run up to a booth I was at later on and quickly tell a vendor "I'll take these three scolies just charge my card thanks" only to see that they later gave them weird names I'd never heard of.

Not only that, I saw them buy up a hammer coral colony labelled as hammer coral colony and proceed to then take it over, give the name of jack o lantern hammer or something, and charge basically double what the original LFS wanted.


Look, I know you want to make money, everyone there does.

But if you want to sell coral, how about checking your corals in the plane like everyone else instead of ripping off communities of hobbyists around the country.

End of rant.

This just rubbed me the wrong way. The market pays what it can but I have a firm belief that scalping via arbitrage shouldn't be allowed. When a hobbyist asks about your corals, I expect to buy your corals, not some flatworm infested p.o.s. that you bought from the maricultured 7 for $100 area and claimed was a special coral.

Anyone who wants to know the vendor can privately pm me and come to their own conclusions, but I believe it is my duty to spread this awareness as this vendor charges a very, very healthy markup and I can confidently say that this was not consistent with their public image, at all.

Thanks for taking the time to read this, if it was any other vendor I probably wouldn't be so upset about it but I think this is just plain fraud.

I should also note, I have photographic evidence of other vendors complaining about this specific vendor at past events, and lack of truthful provenance of the corals and how they were obtained.
I've got nothing to say for or against what you wrote. Just wanted to let you (and other folks who might be reading) that this practice is not isolated to the Reef industry. I work in oil spill response and when a large spill happens people get on the phone and calling around to see who has absorbent pads. They buy an entire warehouse full and then get on the phone and sell the same inventory to another person in the industry, and it goes around until the spiller's response team starts calling around to find the clean-up materials that they need for an emergency response. Same warehouse filled with material finally gets directions where to ship the supplies and they pay the price because the material is needed. Remember COVID Toilet Paper? N95 Masks? That antibiotic Vermicton(?) that also happens to reportedly kill some coral pests as well as cure COVID-19?

I'm glad you don't want to participate in the carnival of evil pricing but I don't think there is anywhere that we can hide, really.
Kate Upton Girl GIF
Just got to shake it off and keep on reefing! :cool:
 

legionofdoon

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The only problem I have with this is it constantly drives the prices higher and higher. Who here remembers when hammer and frogspawn were 25 dollars a head. And when you could go to a show and spend 100 bucks and feel like wow actually made a dent in my tank. Now if you have someone who goes and spends 1k on all the hammers and sells them for 100 dollars a head how's that help the hobby. I mean yeah the lfs made what he wanted and sees them resold for a 100 a head and says like a smart business person, "gee, I can sell mine for 50 a head and make double" so he sells them for 50 and then the same thing happens but the price inflates to 150 on the big business end with a new name change. It goes like this untill it reaches the highest price the market can sustain. It just hurts the people who are new to the hobby and even discourages people from joining. And hurts people who don't have the money to pay market cap prices.
A head!? I remember when you could get pretty much any colony of anything for less than 50. I also remember when no one wanted the "pink" frogspawn because they are not pink they are brown, but tweak the lights (led) enough and they kinda sorta look pink. Luckily I live in Florida so our LFSs can sell stuff for cheaper than most states. ORA is based in my county, I wish they had a store front but our stores sell their stuff for way less than what I see online.
 

ahopki1

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The only issue I have with this is that there are certain venders I avoid because they sell bugs with their corals and they sell corals obtained from the wild as mariculture or aquacultured. If a vender I trust is buying the cheap stuff and selling it at their booth for a profit...who cares. I care about buying a coral from the vendor I trust without knowing that it just came from the crappy coral booth next to them that I just avoided. Example: If I am buying from the WWC booth, I have a reasonable expectation that I am buying a coral from their facility, that WWC has tended to and cared for and brought to the show.
 

62518161

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That mentality is wrong, sure a consumer should have an idea what they are purchasing but if you have a business and you advertise something as something and it’s not that’s SHADY and WRONG. You should be able to TRUST people especially businesses. This mentality is what’s wrong with the world, greed greed greed. Disgusting.
Trust no one.
 

reefinatl

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After way to much time spent thinking about the OP this is my take away.

1. Nothing is wrong with that action by the vendor. Ultimately all these "new" corals are just wholesaled from the pacific and fragged up. The real good ones are kept and grown out to be fragged long term. Buying and flipping from one vendor to the next is just a wholesale priced WYSIWG.

2. If people are happy to spend crazy money to have a crowded out tank of 3" "colonies" that is their prerogative.

3. People in the hobby that really know what's up can continue to buy the same classics that are often the same strains as the new ones at cheap prices.

4. Anyone that really wants to see what's up and get nice stuff can buy boxes at close to wholesale from livestockusa.org straight from the same places the big boys buy their "new" stuff.

5. Gold and pink euphyllyia are really just the previously unwanted browns that now look cool under modern LEDs.
 

Sink_or_Swim

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Yep I saw this and I certainly saw value, but I'm also not out to say it's wrong for people to buy cool corals to resell. That's your business model. But you would think a proposed high tier vendor like BSA knows better than to tarnish their reputation over a quick buck.

I don't know Saw, it just felt weird seeing someone touting as a ultra premium brand doing that. If you're gonna do it, drop the image and be humble and honest instead of fleecing people.

You could charge thousands or hundreds for your frags, and you do, but at least you have the decency as a vendor to back it up with a photo of the grow out or mother colony.

Doesn't it rub you the wrong way when someone is charging a premium for nothing besides marketing behind their brand? You tout the best corals in the universe, but you also don't charge insane prices. You could, but you don't. There's a point where if people want to charge that for their corals, you could probably all band together and do that, and I won't complain because businesses are businesses, but as far as anyone understands, you try your best to run your business and you feel like you are priced for the market.

It should upset you that you basically have a hobbyist collector show up, buy people out, and then make up names and charge 4 times what you do for the same product you offer. I understand that you made your money if they buy you out, but understand that time in the market beats timing the market. In other words, if nobody had sold anything to BSA they would have been there with a few 10 gallon tanks and their thumbs up their butt all weekend, which is how it should be because at $600/frag for a discosoma they should be able to bring their own coral just like everyone else.

A minimum inventory of default stock would be a nice idea to prevent this sort of market abuse at future events.
Wait wait wait... I haven't had a chance to go to one of these big shows yet so forgive my ignorance but... some vendors actually show up with basically empty tanks and don't bring their own stock? I was already disgusted by what you saw in this instance, but that's just next level bad... :hushed-face:
 

Epic Aquaculture

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Wait wait wait... I haven't had a chance to go to one of these big shows yet so forgive my ignorance but... some vendors actually show up with basically empty tanks and don't bring their own stock? I was already disgusted by what you saw in this instance, but that's just next level bad... :hushed-face:
No, Vendors don't show up with empty tanks. If things go well, they may run short on livestock which is a good problem to have, but also very rare these days with everything going on with the economy. It's often time difficult to know how much coral to bring to shows, and in particular to shows where the vendor may be flying as space is limited to what you can ship, or check on your flight.
 

Sink_or_Swim

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No, Vendors don't show up with empty tanks. If things go well, they may run short on livestock which is a good problem to have, but also very rare these days with everything going on with the economy. It's often time difficult to know how much coral to bring to shows, and in particular to shows where the vendor may be flying as space is limited to what you can ship, or check on your flight.
Ok thanks for the clarification - that's what I thought. :) Because that would absolutely also be shady to come and buy up pieces from other vendors and resell without having brought any of their own livestock.
 

MnFish1

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I love that everyone loves collecting corals, but I saw something at Reefstock that really, really bothered me. I specific high end coral vendor was buying stuff off of other vendors in order to fleece the crowds by making up names and abusing their reputation as a high end seller in order to make money and proportedly sell things as "rare" or "unique" just because you have a really reputable brand behind you.

This is not okay and I hope you know who you are if you are reading this.

I will not be purchasing from you again and upon asking a local LFS this is not the first year they have done this so I can only believe this behavior is happening at other shows as well.

For the record, it was not Top Shelf Aquatics. They had a good selection and I got some more dragon tongue. It WAS
another nationally recognized brand.

Buying a coral at a show is one thing, but to use your reputation and good brand name to screw over hobbyists is another. I'm pretty upset about it but I just won't ever give them my money.

Not only that but they had a habit of trying to tell customers including myself, "awwww man there's some rare stuff in there" only for me to see them run up to a booth I was at later on and quickly tell a vendor "I'll take these three scolies just charge my card thanks" only to see that they later gave them weird names I'd never heard of.

Not only that, I saw them buy up a hammer coral colony labelled as hammer coral colony and proceed to then take it over, give the name of jack o lantern hammer or something, and charge basically double what the original LFS wanted.


Look, I know you want to make money, everyone there does.

But if you want to sell coral, how about checking your corals in the plane like everyone else instead of ripping off communities of hobbyists around the country.

End of rant.

This just rubbed me the wrong way. The market pays what it can but I have a firm belief that scalping via arbitrage shouldn't be allowed. When a hobbyist asks about your corals, I expect to buy your corals, not some flatworm infested p.o.s. that you bought from the maricultured 7 for $100 area and claimed was a special coral.

Anyone who wants to know the vendor can privately pm me and come to their own conclusions, but I believe it is my duty to spread this awareness as this vendor charges a very, very healthy markup and I can confidently say that this was not consistent with their public image, at all.

Thanks for taking the time to read this, if it was any other vendor I probably wouldn't be so upset about it but I think this is just plain fraud.

I should also note, I have photographic evidence of other vendors complaining about this specific vendor at past events, and lack of truthful provenance of the corals and how they were obtained.
Just curious - what is the difference of company x buying from a wholesaler, changing the names, and marking up the price. IMHO - it's the naming thats the problem. If you have a rare color of a hammer coral for example may make it more expensive. Calling a red slammer should not.

Buy what you can afford, what you like, etc. I don't see any problem (ethically) with what you described however, except perhaps the renaming - but IMHO - since these names are so artificial anyway - it doesn't bother me.

If I were at that show I would say - hmmmm there is a coral that looks exactly the same as that other one - that is 1/2 the price.

Again - I see your point - and you asked for comments:)
 

MnFish1

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So you're saying if I buy a Colorado sunburst and call it a Carolina sunburst then there's nothing wrong? Because that's what is happening.
I think that if you're going out there buying high end coral - you should know the name and the market price. In any case - what's the difference - since the name is totally made up by someone anyway. Anyone that would buy coral a for $800 when coral b - which looks identical to coral a for $300.

I think the reason for naming was for coral producers to mark their 'lines' of coral - much like dog breeders do (i.e. the AKC name usually starts with the kennel name). But in the end - it's all artificial and made up - IMHO - so if someone wants to change the name from Colorado sunburst to Carolina sunburst - who cares?
 

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