how much is your line worth?

i've got many requests frequently to buy the best of my spawn and I always surprised them by telling them very expensive price, a made up price....

Funny that many people don't realize how difficult it is to make a line. Perhaps they don't know how hard to get the darn best fish to spawn, or how hard to raise the fry through their 3 months ordeal, or how difficult the guessing game of choosing the X and Y for the next spawn and waiting 3 months to find out that you've made a wrong choice, or how I have to do 5 or 6 concurrent spawnings of "similar" lines to get to 1 next level that I wanted.

Take for example my black line. The current blackest boy and his sibling sister is the outcome of a miserable spawn with only 5 survivors. They're the work of 7 generations, all with at least 21 ups and downs (each generation with at least 3 concurrent spawnings). I ain't selling them even for $300 or $400. Why? Cause the darn line took me a good couple of years to develop and he was the only survivor of the best line! Even the funny thing, some people offer me a mere $100 for them! No bloody way! I simply reply back "no". These people should have just bought their fish from casual breeders or even import them from Thailand or Malaysia. Those are the places where they do mass production of fish and sell them for a lot cheaper price. Yes, true, the importation fee is killing the price, but go blame the importers for it! (I know I shouldn't say this, considering I've got some of my fish from importers, but the price tag for importation is just plain silly...perhaps I'll tell the story on another post).

Anyway, as I've known how hard it is to raise a line, I get to appreciate more when I saw someone posting a ridiculous price for a particular fish. Why? Since I know it's darn hard to get it, and the guy was trying to sell one of his best fish for a mere couple measly bux. This doesn't mean that I encourage everyone to sell pricey fish....no....I've seen some stupid guy trying to make a bux and selling el-cheapo fish for ridiculous price, well, I hope there is idiot out there gonna buy it from him.

I've got my share of the experience. For example, I offered one of my super black lines, a 4-ray HMxHMPK super black lines where all the females are 4 rays and they carry long fin, an outcome of 2 years work. I was offering them for about $150 each, a price that a lot of people never appreciated. Guess what....no one ever wanted to sell a 4-ray super black to the market! Why? It's darn rare! The only time I saw such sale was a thai tryng to sell ONLY males with 4-rays, and he tried to sell for $100usd. I know how good his line was, but mine is superior cause i manage to get half of my line to be long fin. His only hmpk line. And yet I've got those inexperience people trying to compare my female with a $20 8-rays blue female!!! Maybe they don't know that blue females, even 16-ray, only cost a couple bux! it's so easy and common to find a good blue. it's like comparing common rocks against diamond and saying they ought to be sinilar price (ok, a bit exaggeration, but same point). just morons....