Pics from TO
 

Oakville Big Al's

http://www.hyperdream.com/~samw/2005...s/IMG_7811.jpg

http://www.hyperdream.com/~samw/2005...s/IMG_7814.jpg

Oakville Reef Gallery

http://www.hyperdream.com/~samw/2005...s/IMG_7801.jpg

http://www.hyperdream.com/~samw/2005...s/IMG_7800.jpg

http://www.hyperdream.com/~samw/2005...s/IMG_7799.jpg

Giant Gigas. I think it was almost 2 feet.

http://www.hyperdream.com/~samw/2005...s/IMG_7795.jpg

Reef Raft

I want to thank ReefRaft for letting me see their store even though they were closed for the move to the new location. They had some really incredible Acros at very reasonable prices that I wanted to bring back with me on the plane but I resisted ONLY because my tank is not suitable for Acros at this time.


http://www.hyperdream.com/~samw/2005...s/IMG_7788.jpg

* I think those Suns were around $100/polyp and the Blueberry Zoos in the middle were $50-$75 per polyp.

http://www.hyperdream.com/~samw/2005...s/IMG_7790.jpg

Great pics!

Re: Pics from TO
 

WHAT!? :eek: PER polyp!?

Re: Pics from TO
 

Yup. A small frag of that Sun coral with 3 or 4 polyps is $300. I was told it would be $100/polyp.

http://www.reefraft.ca/category.asp?icatid=7

As for the pure blueberry color zoos. They were almost $75-100/polyp as well. Those blue zoos were amazing. I've never seen zoanthids that were dark blue like those.

Is it just me or does anyone else find the pricing of trendy corals outrageous?

Can I get a handcount for people who would actually pay those prices?




*willito raises his hand*

... laff


haha, jks Will.

If I win the lottery tonight my hand is up. Oh, wait. The draw's over. Gotta check the ticket.......

Bummer. My hand is still down.

Cheers,

I guess if someone is willing to pay that they can charge it! Personally I wouldn't be caught dead paying 100$ for ONE polyp. There is a line and buying that would be crossing it!

Prices will have to go down soon. With boards like this people will just buy frags off each other and stop nuying from stores with prices like that. I am not up to date with prices but I was in Wai's today and seen a green hammer with 3 heads on it for 80 bucks. Little pricey dont u think?

Well, people in Toronto earn more on average than people in Vancouver. That's why they can afford to pay higher prices. :lol: So its not that Vancouverites are cheap, its just that we don't have as much money as those who live in the Center of the Universe. :razz:

The median average family income in Toronto was $63,700 in 2000 whereas the median average family income in Vancouver was only $57,926.

http://www12.statcan.ca/english/cens...nc/toronto.cfm

http://www12.statcan.ca/english/cens.../vancouver.cfm

PS. Hey, average family income in Calgary in 2000 was $65,488.

http://www12.statcan.ca/english/cens...nc/calgary.cfm

No wonder reefers in Toronto and Calgary are willing to pay more than reefers in Vancouver!!

... Which doesnt explain why I have Chinese guys haggling me down $2 on clownfish....

I don't think it's a matter of income rather than the retailers not cutting each other's throats in TO.

Operating costs and distribution chains also play a large part of it. This is evident even between stores in Vancouver.

Just my $0.02

Cut throat competition isn't a bad thing, keeps the prices within reason - 400$ for a frag, or 100$ for a single zoo polyp is not really reasonable now is it?

Lord knows the guy who collected it didn't get paid more than a few pennies, the markups all happened on the distributor/trans-shippers/retailer end.

Andy

I've never been a believer that geographical location is a reason for stiffer competition between similar markets.

Rather, Economic Principles state that changes in income shifts the demand curve.

http://ecedweb.unomaha.edu/DEm_Sup/shifts.htm

Simply said, the more money you earn, the more you are willing to spend on the same item. With increased demand, the price of the item also increases. The diagram above shows the effects of the prices on a good as income increases.

The way I see it, if a store is pricing items too aggressively low or high, they will not be in business for long. From what I saw in between Toronto and Vancouver, the price difference between the 2 markets were very similiar to the income differences between the 2 cities. The items in Toronto were slightly higher by about 10-15%. Makes sense to me. What we see in the markets now is simply natural economic forces in play.

Of course, supply curves have an impact on price as well. So if there are too many suppliers, price will go down. I just don't think that Vancouver has abnormally that many more suppliers to make that much of a difference. That's why I think income makes a difference.

It's all about what the market will bear. Unfortunately in the West, the hobbiest has been conditioned to lower prices compared to other markets in NA.

What one considers reasonable for pricing is definitely a matter of perspective. What you may consider reasonable may not be to the store owner who has to cover his overhead plus put a little in his pocket at the end of the day.

places like reef raft are hardly a fair comparison of the average east cost operation. they specialize in the best of the best and their prices command that.

i can tell you after living in the states for years that many of the shops in the larger cities have prices more inline with vancouver than toronto. with easy access to shipping 2 day ups for free many of the shops have dropped their prices on equipment and the more common livestock. where shops start to make money is on the more uncommon and rarer corals. im not convinced that the argument of people on the west coast are cheap and wont pay the prices is really true, i think it's more like the people on the east coast of canada are being charged more money and they pay it.

It doesn't matter which way you slice it, SOMEONE is getting rich at 100$ a polyp, and I will venture to say that it isn't the collector. But if someone wants to pay that price for that coral, then I say go for it...

Im with rick. in 3 years that coral will be big enough for frags and then that person can trade or people can buy it for cheaper.

Funny thing is...here an explanation of the coral that RR is selling for $100/polyp.

"Genus Dendrophyllia: Near impossible to distinguish from Tubastrea w/o microscopic analysis of corallite skeletons."

Kind of like the diamond vs cubic zirconia thing. Hard to distinguish the 2 without a microscope, but 1 is way pricier than the other.

It IS a geographical thing, as some of you have pointed out. In Australia, Acanthastrea's for $30-$50 CAD.

Not really...generally a jeweller can tell the difference very easily and will have the ability to perform the analysis. I doubt that most retailers can't tell the corals apart. Just like Acans. Apparantly there are a lot more out there than people realize. It's a gotta have thing...just like the cabbage patch doll or tickle me Elmo.

I meant when the markets are similar: "I've never been a believer that geographical location is a reason for stiffer competition between similar markets."

What is the difference between the Toronto and Vancouver market? I'm saying that it is not the geographical location that makes Toronto corals pricier than Vancouver. Do you disagree and think that Vancouver is cheaper than Toronto due to geographic location only???

The prices in Australia are cheaper because they are already in the tropics. The markets between Australia and Canada are going to be different and that goes without saying. Therefore, you can't compare the 2 entirely different markets.

I don't know. Those expensive sun corals look pretty different than the sun corals I have. Also, experts might be able to tell between Cubic Zirconia and Diamonds but from what I read, it isn't easy. Sort of like trying to identify 2 similar corals to me. Both are hard to identify with an untrained eye and both can be identified with a microscope.

http://www.answers.com/topic/cubic-zirconia

"Cubic zirconia is so optically close to diamond that only a trained eye can easily differentiate the two. There are a few key features of CZ which clearly distinguish it from diamond, some observable only under the microscope or loupe"

If the sun corals are virtually impossible to distinguish, how are the collectors identifying them and how reliable is their identification going to be?

Sam, you must be bored. :lol:

Dendro's vs. sun coral
 

Those dendros have a much larger polyp size,like the size of a toonie,plus they stay open all day and eat like pigs.They are much rarer than the normal sun corals!

Hey Jack. Yeah, I get worked up everytime there is a suggestion that Vancouver's market is abnormal and doesn't follow basic principles of Economics.

:smile:

So how is the relationship of price versus median income applied in other markets in Canada? It doesn't follow that same trend.

Im with Kyle on this one.

It would be extremely difficult to find a correlation, at least statisticly significant with respect to the price of corals and the median income.



Sam:

What specific economic priciple are you referring to ? I looked back in the thread but cant find one that is suggested that Vancouver does not follow.


Wendell

http://ecedweb.unomaha.edu/DEm_Sup/shifts.htm

"In other words, at higher incomes for the buyers in this market, the whole demand curve would lie to the right of the original demand curve. This we call a "shift in demand" cause by an increase in the income level. It is shown in the next diagram. According to this diagram, what happens to the equilibruim price P and quantity Q when the income rises? Yep, more folks want the product so the price will go up! "

This type of demand curve applies to all non-giffin goods. Coral is a non-giffin good. Therefore, there is a correlation between price of corals and median income.

What I'm saying is that Vancouver, Toronto, etc all follow this principle. Prices might be higher in TO because the demand curve is higher (ie. higher median income. See the URL to see the effect of income on the demand curve.). There is nothing at all that is special or abnormal about Vancouver. The prices in Vancouver and Toronto and everywhere else are the way they are because of market conditions. Prices in Vancouver are not artificially low and prices in Toronto are not artificially high in my opinion. Income isn't the only factor but its something that definitely does make a difference, given all else equal (similar markets). Its just common sense that the more money someone has, the more they can afford to spend.

Wendell, in this thread there had been suggestions that geography and cut-throat pricing are the reasons that prices in Vancouver are low. That suggests Vancouver prices are below equilibrium. What I'm saying is that I don't believe that to be true. I believe that the prices in Vancouver ARE at equilibrium because I believe prices in Vancouver (like everywhere else) are set by the market (where the demand curve is a function of income and other variables), not by firms undercutting each other (below equilibrium).

Who cares ? I have disposable income and will buy from whoever I chose.? I'm confused.. I hated economics.....marginal proprensity to consume...heheh :mrgreen:

Err. That's because you have more of it. :lol: Calgarians make more on average. :razz:

reply
 

Sam, your pics won't load, how big are they?