I can't see the bubble bursting anytime soon. Plants are getting more expensive if anything. The few nurseries left seem to be exclusively selling through eBay as they know they can get much higher prices. It is insane how much small seedlings are going for.
That PEOY went pretty cheap in the end. It is worth more than that I think. If he had included a better photo of the flower that would have helped. The seller is in our society and is a friend.
The prices go down at present time for many plants all around the world, for two reasons that will not last :
- There are heaps of wild collected plants entering the trade, micranthum, helenae, praestans, whatever...
- There are many flasks that are sold with nice tags but not the proper parents. I have yet to see a single seedling from a HS flask blooming true to its supposed parentage, though I do not deny that such miracle might exist. Last week my friends in Germany flowered seedlings from a HS intaniae flask, to get a kind of parishii x philippinense ugly duck.
The flasks in Taiwan can be subject to discounts over 70%, so the price is lower than any other people can produce, especially with awarded parents. If you are honest, you cannot make some thousands flasks of a dozen or two dozen different crosses using the same pollen or capsule parents... When I got an offer for 350 flasks of Paphiopedilum mastersianum SM/TPS x self, awarded two years before I know it is bogus, no doubt for that. But most resellers and growers did and do buy such flasks. At best they will be wild seed capsules of mastersianum, or siblings of medium quality plant. At the worst, they will be a Pinnochio or worse a William Mathews x mastersianum. There are many bogus urbanianum in Taiwan right now, they look nice, but they are hybrids. Same for spicerianum, godefroyae, leucochilum ( the black ones are indeed and completely complex hybrids), some rothschildianum I have seen lately are William Ambler x roth.
I saw one nursery offering the yellow bellatulum in Taiwan few weeks ago. They would cull any concolor looking plant, and put it aside. When I asked what's the deal ' it is a potting mistake'. No way, it was just the artificial hybrid of concolor x bellatulum, period...
So now the market suffers from an overload of bogus, crap, low quality flasks ( I do not say the seedlings are not healthy, just that with their real parents, they have NO potential). In a few years, people will realize that they got many poor quality things, and they will pay way more for divisions, or plants in bloom. That's why too blooming size plants or divisions are way more expensive, simply because they are true to name and correct, or they must be. Seedlings, no problem, most will be dead before they bloom...
Roy is right too, in flasks, especially if they are not done using the Japanese method ( or former French method
), cull 25% at each replate, then for the last replate, cull 50%, there are a lot of runts that will never bloom. So 1000 flasks can well translate to only 3000 usable plants ( I do not speak about Maudiae hybrids though) and a bunch of crap that was costly to try to grow and save. As a result, the cost of those 3000 plants is the total amount paid for the 1000 flasks + growing costs, indeed quite a lot, especially in Australia or the USA...
There are still some rothschildianum and stonei in Taiwan that are 18 years OLD, same, there are still on offer sanderianum 'In Charm' x 'Shin Yi', the plants are 20-30 cm leafspan, look nice. However, they have been deflasked in 1995. The same story happened to the Charles E x Borneo, where Val Tonkin had NBS plants that were 30 years old...
AS a result, I do not think the prices will crash, they may go down due to some fancies or 'irregular market movements' such as wild collected batches or flasks of bogus parentage, but afterwards, they will go up even more. It always has been like that with Paphs, and I went through this kind of momentum already 2 times...
The honest sellers have to grow and bloom what they sell, or do it themselves, so they have to charge more. The others, they buy crap with the tags and invoices, and follow those stuff up to their customers, not caring whether they are real or not, or if the plants are healthy or not. Then they can sell pretty damn cheap.
That PEOY is indeed really nice, it is not from Eric Young breeding, but Terry Root/Orchid Zone. roth 'Rex' x sanderianum 'Jacob's Ladder' was one of his best sellers.
