It's all a marketing game. If you can convince someone something is special and create a desire for it, people will plop down stupid amounts of money in an effort to be "exclusive" and part of the "in" crowd. It's like owning Beats headphones, or a Range Rover, etc. There are better alternatives for less, but that doesn't matter because driving your Range Rover with your $300 headphones on makes you "cool". Being in the D.C./Baltimore area, you see it everyday. People in $60k-$100k cars around here are a dime a dozen and many of these people are living paycheck to paycheck so they feel like they look successful and fit in with their neighbor who has the same car.
Keep doing what you're doing. I'm already waiting for another video of the new shipment so I can start picking my next pieces. By the way, I'm looking for a gold Indo torch and maybe a red Acanthophyllia . I say just let people know how long a piece has been in captive conditions, that way people have a realistic expectation if the coral is viable or if the piece may color shift, and are aware of the risk. Heck, you can't even trust names anyway. You see vendors all the time putting designer names on fresh collected pieces that resemble established captive held colonies.
So true, totally marketing, and brilliant at that. Like I said, pyramid scheme. "If I buy from Jim Bob's designer corals at $1500 per inch, I'll grow it out and make enough to pay for my entire tank." Problem is you're not Jim Bob and by the time you grow it out the price has dropped because a dozen or two other guys had the same idea. And beside, the $1500 frag never looked like it did in Jim Bob's photos, hahaha!