I guess part of the learning curve for me was realizing what good stock is, what it is worth, generally speaking, in time and $$$, and, finally, where I could find it. I was lucky in that I lived, for the first decade of my bonsai obsession, less the a 1/2 hour drive from a great bonsai nursery that offered stock from $10 to greater then $5000. I spent a fair amount of money there, but some of my favorite trees have been found on nursery crawls through local box stores and Mom and Pop nurseries. Others have been dug from my yard, or planted there and grown out by me. The bottom line is that, regardless of where you get your material, there has to be real potential to justify the cost in either, 1) buying it, 2) the effort in digging it up and nursing it afterwoods, and 3) the years required to grow out and develop good pre-bonsai stock. At this stage in your bonsai experience, $50 might be all you are willing to afford for pre-bonsai. That's fine...I was there, once, and still love a good deal. The thing is, at this point for me, if the tree doesn't have real potential, I don't want it, and I'm pretty sure you will be wasting $50 on a piece of stock that will never amount to much, even after years of effort. If you really want it, then go for it and give it a shot. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, I guess. Most folks who have been at this for more then a few years would tell you to skip the landscape trees and save your money for stock being developed as pre-bonsai.
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