Why do some people charge so much for corals?
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DBarsotti
Valuable Member
if i had a dollar for everytime someone on a forum cried about coral prices.. i'd have enough dollars to buy at least 1 of those WWC SOTR milli frags.. haha
this hobby is expensive... its not like people are going out in their backyards and diggin up corals.. this stuff is being collected half way around the world, shipped extremely fast and then being raised with extremely expensive equipment that consumes a stupid amount of electricity.. If you think a coral is overpriced, don't buy it, at some point the price of said coral will come down as more people obtain it....
get over it and enjoy the corals you can afford or have before people start forming angry mobs to go after vendors with pitch forks and torches..
without vendors and importers none of you would have any coral at all, so be thankful and stop biting the hand that feeds
this hobby is expensive... its not like people are going out in their backyards and diggin up corals.. this stuff is being collected half way around the world, shipped extremely fast and then being raised with extremely expensive equipment that consumes a stupid amount of electricity.. If you think a coral is overpriced, don't buy it, at some point the price of said coral will come down as more people obtain it....
get over it and enjoy the corals you can afford or have before people start forming angry mobs to go after vendors with pitch forks and torches..
without vendors and importers none of you would have any coral at all, so be thankful and stop biting the hand that feeds
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kellyjn
Active Member
Dbarsotti,
How about you get over it!!!! If you or anyone else don't like these threads......DON'T READ THEM OR POST IN THEM! Pretty simple idea right? I'm tired of the people that cry about people who are complaining they don't want to pay stupid money for corals!!!! If I had a dollar for everyone of you, I might be able to afford a 1/4" piece of the next latest greatest coral the suckers are going to line up and buy.
Let's all just sit here with our blinders on, sing Cumbaya, and everything will get better right????
How about you get over it!!!! If you or anyone else don't like these threads......DON'T READ THEM OR POST IN THEM! Pretty simple idea right? I'm tired of the people that cry about people who are complaining they don't want to pay stupid money for corals!!!! If I had a dollar for everyone of you, I might be able to afford a 1/4" piece of the next latest greatest coral the suckers are going to line up and buy.
Let's all just sit here with our blinders on, sing Cumbaya, and everything will get better right????
I
inactive
Guest
Glad you label people who can afford what they want to no matter the cost, size whatever... "suckers"... If you can afford it and want it.. good.. if you can't afford it, don't like it, hate the vendor or whatever... suck it up like a beer belly and put a croc in it.
I'm not gonna goto the benz dealership and kick cars unless it's a Kia with a Benz price nah mean?
MoneyPit
Well-Known Member
Cool video.
DBarsotti
Valuable Member
Listen here, Guy.
First. i don't appreciate your sarcastic tone, its not needed or appreciated. Secondly, I'm not Crying about these threads, i'm simply stating the fact that not a week goes by where theres not a thread complaing about the same thing that was discussed the pervious week. Its a never ending broken record. You want to complain? go find one of the other 500 threads on this topic.
Everyone always wants to say how crappy it is that the coral is expensive and that the equipment is expensive, do you realize the efforts that go into collecting these corals? the thousand of man hours and money that go into designing better products for our reefs? If everything was dirt cheap and traded between reefers there wouldn't be any money in this hobby to get it to the place it is today. Go build yourself a cone skimmer or an aqua-controller and get back to me on how long it took you to do so and the cost of offering it to other reefers at a decent price. Also I would love to see you fly to Aussie, obtain dive gear and a boat, go out and collect a colony of coral, then ship it back to the usa fast enough that it doesn't die for less than 100 bucks. heck.. i'd like to see you do it for less than 1000.
If You don't have the money to buy the expensive piece of coral, Don't buy it then.. But Don't cry about the guy who did have the money to buy it because he just provided the vendor with funds to import a new awesome coral that will be offered to hobbists, that more than likely will eventually end up in your tank at an awesome price, thanks to the thousand of devoted reefers who don't complain about spending money on a hobby they love.
snoochy freakin boochy.
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CoralBandit
Well-Known Member
As a newb several years ago I felt the same way, but I have seen both sides of the spectrum now and I am a pretty good judge on pricing and coral value. I think as people get more expereince they realize some corals are actually much more rare than others and worth a pretty penny. Sometimes its a scam, yes, sometimes its not and word spreads fast i.e. your BPC and pink *******. Think of it like any other market, once your more experienced you can begin to learn what goes on beneath the scenes and be a better judge. The main reason though is because people buy it :wink:
Tyrrell109
Wet Behind The Ears
+1..
Scoly at $50? LOL..i wish i could find nice scoly at $ 50..NEVER SEEN THAT !
grade b or c scoly ..probably what Gary said about $ 90-$ 125 thats not including shipping .
Acan colony for $ 100..never heard of ..say $ 200-$ 600 depending on the beauty ( shipping will be extra ).
honestly we can not make profit from Acan nowaday because we have to buy high and its harder to move frags now. Now ..you dont realize how many frags die after we frag them.
now..most hobbyists are not awared that retailers have to buy minimum or are forced to buy other junks in order to get one nice piece that might be the only piece that make money.
the minimum one box from Aussie shipment is easily over $ 1,500. There is no way we can just buy one or two pieces . We have to buy what we dont want and a lot . So..you will see a lot of cheap stuffs because most vendors can not move then so they have to sell them at cost or lower than what they pay for but make up with the few pieces that they can make money from.
Large Electricity bill, Gas, maintainance cost, over head expense got to be added to the cost plus 10-15% of loss of corals.
On top of it , most vendors have to eat the high cost shipping ..easily small box is about $ 40-$ 50 not including cost of heatpacks, ice pack, styro box which could add up to about $ 10 each set.
nowaday we dont get nice pieces for cheap. All exporters charges rediculous price on them and believe me its hard to find beautiful pieces .
do you want to know what i drive? ( A Beat up 2000 civic honda !! ) lol and proud of it ..
:wink: I do have to work my *** off and pay this bills..i do it because i love this hobby but its not going to make me rich ..no way in this hobby.!
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I think if more hobbiest realized that corals are bought either two ways- transhipped or through a wholesaler., and the costs associated with both, there might be a few less complaints (though people will always complain about money, it's what we do.) Through a wholesaler, you're paying diver-holding facility-exporter-shipper-importer-wholesaler-retailer. That's a long chain of mark-ups.
If you buy direct, you're buying stock by the Kilogram. That means you're telling a guy half-way across the globe "can I get this many kilo's of corals, oh, and pretty please some nice ones too?"
You might get a 5x markup, or even an insane 10x mark on a few cherry pieces, but for every nice piece, there's a couple kilograms of things you're lucky to make a profit on at all.
Now to both of those factor in overheads/employees/paying off the debt of starting the place (several hundred thousands in loans takes awhile to pay off) and it's easy to see why the best way to leave the industry with a million bucks is to come into it with three million.
No, it's not a sob-story for the retailers-it's a living, but thinking of them as these slick "big coral" fat cats sitting in a smoking room laughing maniacally as they talk about profit margins? Just fantasy.
If you buy direct, you're buying stock by the Kilogram. That means you're telling a guy half-way across the globe "can I get this many kilo's of corals, oh, and pretty please some nice ones too?"
You might get a 5x markup, or even an insane 10x mark on a few cherry pieces, but for every nice piece, there's a couple kilograms of things you're lucky to make a profit on at all.
Now to both of those factor in overheads/employees/paying off the debt of starting the place (several hundred thousands in loans takes awhile to pay off) and it's easy to see why the best way to leave the industry with a million bucks is to come into it with three million.
No, it's not a sob-story for the retailers-it's a living, but thinking of them as these slick "big coral" fat cats sitting in a smoking room laughing maniacally as they talk about profit margins? Just fantasy.
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My take on this is..If you want a certian piece of coral your going to pay what the cost is no matter what. It's the way the hobby is. This hobby isn't cheap. the lighting isn't cheap, the protien skimmers(the good one's)aren't cheap and the high end corals aren't cheap as well as the tank etc...If you walk into your local LFS or go to an online vendors store and see something you really want your going to buy it and your going to pay what they are asking. It's just the way it works folks we knew when we got into this hobby it wasn't cheap. As for the vendors these guys are trying to make a buck just like we are when we punch that time clock, there's no difference they are trying to make a living just like we are.....so that's my take.....
The way I see it, its not so much the venders. They have the right to recoup their investments, if they gave their stuff away they would go out of business and the hobby would suffer for it. For the most part the high prices you see are on the "designer" corals. On stuff like that you are paying for the name attached to it. I admit they are some beautiful corals and I have a few, but think about it. If Jason Fox never discovered the my miami and the only one was in my tank, would anyone pay me $1500 for a booger frag of it, I think not. And the the reasoning that the cost of importing and what not is what makes it so expensive goes out the window since they didn't import it anyway. Yeah, yeah, I know they have grow it out and everything, but does that cost $1500 per frag? They are only limited because of their price. To further support my view, think of this. How much do you think Mr. coral sold the JF tiger lily for (it originated from Mr. coral) compared to the cost of it now. Just the way I see it.
I
inactive
Guest
I can sell whatever I want.. for what I want.. and call it whatever I want.
Still though.
Chicken?
Still though.
Chicken?
Ian
Valuable Member
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