Selling Corals for Profit $$$

[canadianbudz604]

Wow.... The guys that buy huge colonies for say $100 and break it up into say 20 frags @ $10 a piece aren't making much of a profit AND it's the only way a lot of us get corals.... What's the problem?

[trilinearmipmap]

1. Laissez-faire

2. The knowledge which is freely given on these boards is more valuable than the corals we try to charge each other for

3. I would be inclined to start a coral bank, ie. established hobbyists can have a frag of whatever coral for zero, in return if my tank crashes you give me a frag back to restock. Kind of like insurance

4. It is a collegial hobby until money gets involved

Incidentally I'm sitting near a tank with 6 BTA's, bought one BTA from Samw something like 8 or 10 years ago, if I sold 5 of them for the original purchase price I guess I earned 25 bucks per year. Woohoo!


Just my view.

[Samw]

Originally Posted by trilinearmipmap

Incidentally I'm sitting near a tank with 6 BTA's, bought one BTA from Samw something like 8 or 10 years ago, if I sold 5 of them for the original purchase price I guess I earned 25 bucks per year. Woohoo!

Nice. You got a clone from the very first RBTA on Canreef as far as I know. Since I had a crash last year, my RBTA has shrunk and I was going to post a msg asking to see if someone had a clone of mine from over the years for sale as it has sentimental value. LOL. There should be hundreds of my clones out there now over the 10-12 years.

Ever come down to Vancouver?

[albert_dao]

Okay let me pose this question:

At which point does it become profiteering? Is it when the $$$ earned extends beyond the original value of the coral? Is it when the sale price is inflated to market value? Is it when a coral is parted out to recover costs? Etc, etc, etc... Seems pretty gray to me.

[Zoaelite]

Originally Posted by albert_dao

Okay let me pose this question:

At which point does it become profiteering? Is it when the $$$ earned extends beyond the original value of the coral? Is it when the sale price is inflated to market value? Is it when a coral is parted out to recover costs? Etc, etc, etc... Seems pretty gray to me.

I would argue the line is crossed when you full well know your taking advantage of a fellow hobbyist.

Let me give you an example;

Seller A buys zoas that lack a specific trade name from LFS. They then proceed to name said coral themselves to improve its ability to sell (lets face it, named stuff goes for more EVERY time).

This seller then posts these zoas for sale, priced per polyp at $35 exclaiming what a major deal these are. He/she goes on to state that if you don't buy now the price will increase DOUBLE to $75 per polyp.

Seller A is pretty much saying these are 50% off at the moment indicating they are heavily reducing the price to be an AMAZING person and sell you some unreal coral a wicked deal!

Sadly Seller A probably bought that unnamed zoa rock from a local LFS at around $50, if all 10 polyps sell @ $35 then $300 profit has been made or 600% profit.

That is personally what I consider profiteering

[albert_dao]

Originally Posted by Zoaelite

I would argue the line is crossed when you full well know your taking advantage of a fellow hobbyist.

Let me give you an example;

Seller A buys zoas that lack a specific trade name from LFS. They then proceed to name said coral themselves to improve its ability to sell (lets face it, named stuff goes for more EVERY time).

This seller then posts these zoas for sale, priced per polyp at $35 exclaiming what a major deal these are. He/she goes on to state that if you don't buy now the price will increase DOUBLE to $75 per polyp.

Seller A is pretty much saying these are 50% off at the moment indicating they are heavily reducing the price to be an AMAZING person and sell you some unreal coral a wicked deal!

Sadly Seller A probably bought that unnamed zoa rock from a local LFS at around $50, if all 10 polyps sell @ $35 then $300 profit has been made or 600% profit.

That is personally what I consider profiteering

Hmm, while I don't necessarily agree with the ethics of your example, I also don't think that's a strong case against profiteering. Where do you draw the line? 100%? 200%? When someone goes from being 'dude in a basement' to 'dude in a basement with a business license"? What if we extended that last frame to 'dude who has a storefront'?

Take Steve Tyree for example. All strikes against him, and I may be going out on a limb here, but that guy REVOLUTIONIZED the reef hobby. His 'LE' gimmick reinvigorated the entire coral scene well beyond "OMG, Fiji Aquaculture is so dope!" (and trust me, this was the state of the hobby circa 1999-2003). And he did it straight off the back of your example. I'd argue that this sort of, let's call it entrepreneurial, spirit is exactly what keeps the hobby healthy. Eagle eyed hobbyist spots a gem at LFS, sensationalizes it and drives a frenzy, creating a secondary market. I see no harm in this. The coral has already proven its worth to the original benefactor (the LFS that sold it at their expected markup) and now there is a new and unique strain of coral that will be hosted and propagated by steadily increasing numbers of hobbyist. Fast forward six months and the market value of the coral will steadily decline as supply exceeds demand. For most people, getting a nice coral isn't a matter of having money on hand, but patience.

Anyway, about to flood a tank, I'll be back to stir this up more in case y'all want to continue the dialogue.

[rickcasa]

This takes me back to when I was collecting hockey cards when I was a kid in the 80s. Need 'em, got 'em, need 'em. I traded and collected some of the best...but alas I didn't retire at 14 because my mom accidentally threw them out with the trash.
Anyhoo, deep down, most of us are just collectors wanting the newest prettiest thang, an addiction that we must sustain by selling something else. We can all agree there's no problem with that. Even if one profits, it all evens up in the end with expenses - equipment upgrades/losses/unsold inventory.
And for those who are in it solely for profit, avoid the public shaming and just get a business license (cost you 2 frags), there you're legit...and get paid in cash so you can pursue another hobby, advanced creative accounting.

[Coral Hoarder]

Lol I love this thread a coral is worth what some one will pay
If you don't sell a palys or ZOA say rastas or Darth maul at 30-50 pp the market gets kiled and every ones are worthless so if some one gets a bunch on a rock and sells them for 100 pp if that's what the online price is I don't see the problem they got lucky lol ?

[Aquattro]

Lots of different views and points in this thread. And still not locked. That in itself is pretty good.
So let's recap. Selling something to make a bit of money back to feed hobby=good.
Selling parts of large piece you bought to recoup some of the cost=good.

How we doin' so far?

Selling off entire contents of tank because you're done=good. Got it.

Selling excess growth that happens to buy the next few buckets of salt=good.

Buying $200 frag, growing said frag and selling multiple frags for $200=good.

I'm on a roll

Buying a cool coral at store and chopping into pieces to flip a profit, repeatedly=bad

Having a coral farm in your basement to pay mortgage=good

Am I on track here?

I have to pretty much agree with all of the above. Where it gets grey, from a Canreef standpoint, is which of the above conflicts with the interest of paying sponsors (those are the greedy LFS bastards we've read so much about).
My job is to sort through the grey area and determine if/when and who is meeting this criteria. We went from a almost no frag sales policy to our current one, which somewhat conflicts with sponsors, but is overall beneficial to members and the hobby in general.
If I feel someone is jeopardizing our income/potential income, therefore the fate of the board, I need to step in and disallow such sales. That's the board way.
Other than that, if you can make a buck, not screw someone and everybody goes home happy, have at 'er!

[canadianbudz604]

Zoaelite, that's right, but you don't run across people like
That very often. I've been on this forum for a couple years and I usually buy corals off the same few people. Maybe they make 5$ or something off me but just in their time alone doesn't make them a profit. But sometimes there is a few people that find a really good deal and take advantage of it. But we wouldn't get a frag of that coral unless they were selling it.