Re: [aroid-l] Let the--. Mitch. and others.

From: "Michael Marcotrigiano" <mmarcotr at email.smith.edu> on 2004.07.28 at 13:04:02(11854) Everyone is forgetting the great deals you can get if you know how to shop on ebay. I've gotten many a nice plant for 5.00 that sells in catalogs for 25.00 not to mention the crazy shipping prices of mail order catalogs. Most ebayers charge about 5.00 to ship a plant and will combine orders without increasing shipping cost. Catalogs on the otherhand are famous for asking 25-30% of the cost. One that shall remain nameless has a common cultivar for 10.00 and a rare one for 200.00 so they (and I did not order from them) wanted 30% of the 200.00 to ship the rare one. I asked them why it costs 60.00 to mail the rare plant and 3.00 to mail the common one. They got nasty and told me where to go. Guess they are too stupid to figure out a fair shipping rate. The other thing about ebay is it is easier to shop than finding every small business that is not 'on line' . There are still many tiny hobby and small business folks that are nearly invisible unless you find out how to get their list the old fashioned way - by reading an add and sending 2.00 for the list. They don't want to be online so they are hurting themselves. +More _______________________________ Michael Marcotrigiano, Ph.D Director of the Botanic Garden and Professor of Biological Sciences Smith College Lyman Conservatory, 15 College Lane Northampton, MA 01063 email: mmarcotr@smith.edu voice: 413-585-2741; fax: 413-585-2744 www.smith.edu/garden www.science.smith.edu/~mmarcotr ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "Art is the unceasing effort to compete with the beauty of flowers and never succeeding." Marc Chagall >>> ju-bo@msn.com 07/28/04 05:10AM >>> >From: "Mitch ." >Reply-To: aroid-l@lists.ncsu.edu >To: aroid-l@lists.ncsu.edu >Subject: Re: [aroid-l] Let the buyers beware. >Date: Tue, 27 Jul 2004 23:42:27 -0400 > Dear All, Obviously there are some GREAT deals and VERY honest dealers on auction sites, I know many. Some Amorphophallus sps., seeds, etc. are available nowhere else, go for them. The 'buyer beware' posting was a caution against OBVIOUS (to most of us) rip-off artists, a caution to the new-comers to look more closely, and in a manner of speaking to "sort the wheat from the chaff" as it were. For those who fail to do so, learn to like the taste of chaff is all I say. The auction at Fairchild where over $1,000.00 was paid for a Philodendron can NOT be compared to what I am discussing, as the Philo. sps. in question belongs to a species which exists in the wild consisting of a population of less than ten plants, and maybe twenty or so plants (most from cuttings from three plants collected in the 70`s). The proceeds from this auction also go as support to the IAS, the group that helps support ( I think!) this web site. To contact a seller on the site I mentioned is not possible unless you register on that site as a customer, this I choose NOT to do, I do not work w/ auction houses, this is my choice. Good luck all! For those who pay big bucks and end up with a Syngonium podophyllum or Epipremnum pinnatum, or a common Anthurium sp. from K-Mart instead of a 'rare Philodendron', take heart---all of these are rare in Alaska or Russia. Good Growing. Julius Boos WPB, FLORIDA >Yes. Buyer beware. But be open minded. >Having bought dozens of plants on ebay, my experiences have been >sometimes worse, but often better than with commercial nurseries. >Having sold hundreds of plants on eBay, my opinion on the prices >being paid is admittedly biased, but the supposedly high prices >sometimes paid are usually for plants of a variety or SIZE not >available elsewhere. Also, as many amateurs are starting to sell, >prices are coming way down. You simply cannot get an Amo corm >bigger than a walnut for love or money from a commercial nursery, >but softball sized corms for common types can now be had at auction >for not much more than the walnuts. And who is to say what a >fair price is for a real monster, like the size of a bowling ball? >Why don't the nurseries sell five or ten pound corms? > >There is no substitute for a good, reliable professional nursery, >and you are going out on a limb when you buy at auction or from any >new source. But why not go out on a limb? > >That's where the fruit is! > >Mitch > >

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