Coral prices

[LIreefguy]

Lol i just missed the fact that you are also on long island. Where have you been going to get corals? POTO in staten island has a 20, 30, and 40 dollar section in their store where you can get insane deals not available online.

I mostly by from tjm corals or tropical island In deer park

poto is a little far to drive for me

 

[MaxTremors]

They set the price bc ppl are buying it when they get Reefing Fever (usually a new hobbyists with 1 year in)

I mean, think about it. As a biz you can NOT make much money in profits selling in volume.

There are not enough Reefers in the U.S. to support selling your "product" at volume qtys. There is only about 500,000 to 600,000 Reefers in the U.S.

So they are forced to make profits selling to the one person at huge markups.

Given enough waiting time, some idiot will buy a $1,000 coral that costs less than a $100 in investments.

Same logic can be applied to a biz selling baseball cards for profit. Limited market, limited supply, huge profit on the "I gotta have it" rarity.


.

In 2011 there were 750,000 reefers in the US, there are undoubtedly more now.

 

[Reefing_addiction]

WWC has a 10 day guarantee on their corals
But
YOU PAY FOR THAT WITH THEIR PRICES

Pieces of the ocean (POTO) 14 day guarantee
And you still pay for that but way less then WWC

I would said that guarantee is worth a little bit more money maybe not as much as they want us to pay (in WWCs case)

some things just don’t ship well


What I really hate is other hobbiest trying to charge me what the retail price is of something they have fraged because to me that’s outrageous

 

[Reefing_addiction]

Lol i just missed the fact that you are also on long island. Where have you been going to get corals? POTO in staten island has a 20, 30, and 40 dollar section in their store where you can get insane deals not available online.

This is sooo unfair!!! Why do they have to be so far away I love POTO

 

[dedragon]

I mostly by from tjm corals or tropical island In deer park

poto is a little far to drive for me

gotcha, most of the aquarium stores are closer to the city. If you do get a chance i highly suggest POTO when you get the time. KHC in queens is a good place to get steals on mostly lps and softies but isnt very clean.

 

[C. Eymann]

I used to really balk at how much high end acropora has become, back in 2006 I struggled to bring myself to spend $120 on a frag of purple monster, as back then, spending that much for frag was viewed as being a little bit rediculous.

These days the game has really changed, the "comic book" names have nurtured a collective aspect to the coral hobby and its now almost like Pokemon, "gotta catch them all".
Its a far cry different from the late 90s when the main goal was to have the most natural looking display of a coral reef in a glass box, fast forward to current times people are color crazyed and want to have a collection of the most colorful pieces they can, without much regard if it looks "natural" or not, also in addition to having a nice tank with killer looking corals to stare at, many plan to grow these out and trade/sell frags with other hobbyists, so to someone confident in their abilities to grow these corals, its kinda like an investment.

What I can say from my experience is that a lot of work, time and money go into production of some "comic book / shop named" corals.

Lets say you get in a large order of mariculture pieces, air freight from Indonesia is crazy expensive right now, lets say 75% make it past the first month depending on the condition the shipment came in, as many times there are delays and loss maybe more, then 6mo later only 40% of that surviving 75% really start coloring up to be something special, then you put them through the QT process that involves weekly dipping and other prophylactic QT techniques that lasts months, inevitably some colonies wont put up with this much stress and there will be losses, now these QT'd corals go into grow out, many are stalled / colored down from enduring the QT process, after 6mo- 1 year of grow out- you might get to release a handful of pieces with a "name", the labor and materials to do all of this can really add up quickly,

After experiencing all of this first hand in the past few years I have a renewed appreciation for what some companies do to get certain corals ready for sale and dont really view the prices as being too crazy anymore.


Just my two pennies

 

[dedragon]

This is sooo unfair!!! Why do they have to be so far away I love POTO

its still a 45 minute trip and you have to pay tolls to get to staten island (PITA) but worth it just for POTO. Also turkeys everywhere near the store for some reason. I mean like huge thanksgiving size turkeys too, real odd sight to see and drive around in NY

 

[fachatga]

I love really close to vivid aquariums. Why I love shopping there and not even looking at their stock online is I get to find my favorite corals without seeing names or prices. It’s about 50/50 when my favorites are cheap vs expensive. But overall I’ve got the same opinion as most people. Corals do grow slowly so not much supply. And some pieces are unique and amazing coloration. I compare it to scotch. There’s a difference between the $10 bottle and the $200 bottle. But once it gets over $250-300 or so you’re paying for a name and not better taste. And I’ve been fortunate to have tasted 40 year old bottles worth thousands of dollars for free. Similar concept here for the most part.

 

[LIreefguy]

I seem poto at shoes but never been to store , his online prices are still a little too high for my liking. But I’ll have to try the store out on of these days road trip
Also a lot of these sps only look great under blues. I don’t like that blue of a look for my tank

don’t want the neighbors to think I am an alien

 

[fachatga]

You can usually negotiate a bit in the store. They’ve discounted pieces for me a few times. I know they can be a big pricy on some pieces. But to save the coral of getting shipped is worth it.

 

[dedragon]

I seem poto at shoes but never been to store , his online prices are still a little too high for my liking. But I’ll have to try the store out on of these days road trip
Also a lot of these sps only look great under blues. I don’t like that blue of a look for my tank

don’t want the neighbors to think I am an alien

haha definitely got u there. They run t5s over their sps growout, let me see if i can get a pic of their store its just so clean, but packed with corals.

 

[dedragon]

I would definitely get my wallet ready if going there, the corals are just too good to pass up. You can obviously tell though, im a big fan of the crew at POTO, super nice guys

 

[sagee]

I like how you crossed out the Coral name but not the website

But yes I get what you're saying. I try to get most designer corals during live sales. Other than that I buy from lfs. All about supply and demand. Would I pay more than 100 for a lil nub of acro? Most likely not. For a colony yes. It also takes time and money to grow out said colonies so I can see why there is such a high markup.

So my belief is this also is a marketing game or gimmick. Hear me out if I put a coral frag on my website for $500 bucks I paid $20 bucks for the whole colony, in a rare case if someone comes along and buys that frag huge score for me, but if I have a flash sale or live sale people are going to see this HUGE "discount" when I list the same coral for lets say $150 leading to the sale or impulse buy because it's a deal, either way its a win for the seller and I think these live sales are 100 percent focused on making you impulse buy because limited number lots of buyer and the "discount" they are waving around making us think we are getting this huge deal when we are still getting shafted.

 

[dedragon]

at like 21 minutes in they go through the coral systems

 

[|Frank|]

So my belief is this also is a marketing game or gimmick. Hear me out if I put a coral frag on my website for $500 bucks I paid $20 bucks for the whole colony, in a rare case if someone comes along and buys that frag huge score for me, but if I have a flash sale or live sale people are going to see this HUGE "discount" when I list the same coral for lets say $150 leading to the sale or impulse buy because it's a deal, either way its a win for the seller and I think these live sales are 100 percent focused on making you impulse buy because limited number lots of buyer and the "discount" they are waving around making us think we are getting this huge deal when we are still getting shafted.

You make a great point. I thought of this as well and try to keep each purchase under $20 and always try and go for the $5 and $10 corals. Although sometimes I do spend more than I want on a piece during these sales but its always for something I'm like "whoa that would look cool in my tank" sorta thing... They still make money but it also makes me feel a lot better about the purchase. When I talk to some of the employees who work at the LFSs' around me they always say 99% of the time, that the more boutique companies mark down their prices for these sales to what they would normally sell it for. Other than that its crazy prices because people buy it..

 

[ZoWhat]

With these corals prices....

Just book a 2 week vacation to Indonesia, charter a boat, rent scuba equipment, take coral and sneak it back into the U.S.

About the same price as online prices


.

 

[Steven Garland]

Its incredibly insane,and I complain about it 24/7 buttttttt,as long as there are people who will pay it they will keep pricing corals with such a high price tag.

The moment people stop paying the insane prices and playing the name game,prices will go down eventually.

 

[LAX Noob Reef]

I admit that I bought 400+ coral before back in 2013-15. Was new to hobby, and was thinking growing and flipping. Now, I'm just starting back on a new tank, and think I'll stick with my $20-30 Zoa frag. Wife was tramutized on how much I spend on this **** last time, now is either cheap butt coral or fish with live rock only.

 

[sagee]

You make a great point. I thought of this as well and try to keep each purchase under $20 and always try and go for the $5 and $10 corals. Although sometimes I do spend more than I want on a piece during these sales but its always for something I'm like "whoa that would look cool in my tank" sorta thing... They still make money but it also makes me feel a lot better about the purchase. When I talk to some of the employees who work at the LFSs' around me they always say 99% of the time, that the more boutique companies mark down their prices for these sales to what they would normally sell it for. Other than that its crazy prices because people buy it..

I find myself doing the same thing honestly, but ill end up with a coral that if I wasn't under my impulsive thoughts I would probably pass on if I were in a lfs taking my time and really looking at it. I have been disappointed to many times with these live sales from the deceptive colors or sizes that I've learned to go into a store and get something because I think it has potential or I just really appreciate it rather then some silly name being the driving force. In the NY and NJ area I like poto and they have those actions my coworker loves lol, and we can go into the store to pick them up but nice clean shop with nice guys, pop corals in Brooklyn is another nice shop if you like lps you won't be disappointed! I really like iconic aquariums in the Inglewood nj area this is purely a reefers shop from lps to sps he has it all worth a stop definitely, Joe over there is a super knowledgeable guy and he is a reefer through and through he has a small amount of fish but it isnt the run of the mill stuff he tries to get in different stuff that isn't commonly seen. No matter what kind of reef tank you have he'll have what your looking for and his prices are very fair.

 

[ReefBeta]

The way I see it, on the legit side of things, some of those high price acro and blasto have really fantastic and unique coloration. Yes they come from the wild at some point, but they don't really like the common ones. It's like someone digging a coal mine and found a gem inside and sell for a high price.

Then on the shady side of things, other coal miners saw that, and tried to give a name of a coal and sell it for higher, or find a red piece of glass and sell it as ruby, a crystal and sell it as diamond, etc. Now all of a sudden everyone is saying their stuff is unique but it's not. It's not like this situation is unique for our hobby. Just we're not big enough to have certify agents to value the corals so it's all up to the free market to regulate itself, which didn't work very well.