I have been following a thread on bonsaiTalk that was kind of interesting. Several members from BonsaiNut have voiced opinions on the thread. I considered the topic to be a good topic for discussion and thought I would bring it to the table here and see where we go with it.
In a nut shell there was a person contemplating purchase of an older trident maple, 8" caliper. He wanted to know if it was a good deal at $800 USD. Actually he wanted to know what it may be worth on the open market without listing a price. Some of the comments brought the discussion around to caliper inch pricing. $100 per inch seemed to be a good starting point.
Some responses were "the stock is worth what someone is willing to pay for it". Hogwash - and we all know that. There are standards in the wholesale landscape industry for plant prices based on caliper or pot size. I know the standards are a little loose but competition has to an extent leveled the playing field. In bonsai I see prices all over the place, and that means (to me) that the sellers have adopted the "it's worth what I can get for it" mentality. That could be dangerous or it could be profitable.
Let's discuss this concept - shall we?
For the sake of this discussion I would like to set some rough guidelines. I know they will be ignored but humor me on this, at least for a while. The stock I am referring to meets most if not all of the criteria below :
1. The stock is still in a nursery container or is still in the ground.
2. The stock may or may not have had structured pruning lending the final product to bonsai. If it has had some training please note why it should fetch more than an average price vs. same species without the training but same caliper.
3. The stock is not ready for a pot per se, perhaps a training pot but not a real pot. It still has work to be done.
4. Discuss any species but please note the species as that may or may not have an impact on the pricing.
I'll start out with an example :
There's a local wholesale nursery I visit periodically. I went the other day as they got in a shipment of Japanese black pines and called my friend with a nursery to let her know. My friend called me and I dropped what I was doing to make a run and take a look around. I picked up a couple as she needed one for a landscape job and the other was for me - yes, I need help. To some this may be no big deal - but JBP in Florida? Pretty rare if at all.
They were from north Florida or Georgia and were ball and burlap. They actually arrived in November and were placed in shallow holes for keeping. 24 total and all in the 3.5" to 5" range and about 6' tall. Nice trunks and still had those precious lower branches. The downside was a root ball in heavy clay. Several hours later I had carefully removed a good amount of clay exposing the future nebari and a nice little flare at the nebari line. I potted it up in a cut off 55 gallon barrel in a free draining soil mix. I'm contemplating where to cut to make a new leader. After that heals I will begin the process of grafting future primary branches if I do not get some bud pops.
Cost? Less than $100 wholesale. Future tree is 5 to 10 years in development before it ever sees a training pot. At that point if I sell it I would ask in the $400 range or perhaps more if the nebari develops nicely. Is that in a reasonable range? Too low or too high?
Anyhow - I am interested in hearing what others have to say about this type of stock and the pricing they see, set or would pay and why.
In a nut shell there was a person contemplating purchase of an older trident maple, 8" caliper. He wanted to know if it was a good deal at $800 USD. Actually he wanted to know what it may be worth on the open market without listing a price. Some of the comments brought the discussion around to caliper inch pricing. $100 per inch seemed to be a good starting point.
Some responses were "the stock is worth what someone is willing to pay for it". Hogwash - and we all know that. There are standards in the wholesale landscape industry for plant prices based on caliper or pot size. I know the standards are a little loose but competition has to an extent leveled the playing field. In bonsai I see prices all over the place, and that means (to me) that the sellers have adopted the "it's worth what I can get for it" mentality. That could be dangerous or it could be profitable.
Let's discuss this concept - shall we?
For the sake of this discussion I would like to set some rough guidelines. I know they will be ignored but humor me on this, at least for a while. The stock I am referring to meets most if not all of the criteria below :
1. The stock is still in a nursery container or is still in the ground.
2. The stock may or may not have had structured pruning lending the final product to bonsai. If it has had some training please note why it should fetch more than an average price vs. same species without the training but same caliper.
3. The stock is not ready for a pot per se, perhaps a training pot but not a real pot. It still has work to be done.
4. Discuss any species but please note the species as that may or may not have an impact on the pricing.
I'll start out with an example :
There's a local wholesale nursery I visit periodically. I went the other day as they got in a shipment of Japanese black pines and called my friend with a nursery to let her know. My friend called me and I dropped what I was doing to make a run and take a look around. I picked up a couple as she needed one for a landscape job and the other was for me - yes, I need help. To some this may be no big deal - but JBP in Florida? Pretty rare if at all.
They were from north Florida or Georgia and were ball and burlap. They actually arrived in November and were placed in shallow holes for keeping. 24 total and all in the 3.5" to 5" range and about 6' tall. Nice trunks and still had those precious lower branches. The downside was a root ball in heavy clay. Several hours later I had carefully removed a good amount of clay exposing the future nebari and a nice little flare at the nebari line. I potted it up in a cut off 55 gallon barrel in a free draining soil mix. I'm contemplating where to cut to make a new leader. After that heals I will begin the process of grafting future primary branches if I do not get some bud pops.
Cost? Less than $100 wholesale. Future tree is 5 to 10 years in development before it ever sees a training pot. At that point if I sell it I would ask in the $400 range or perhaps more if the nebari develops nicely. Is that in a reasonable range? Too low or too high?
Anyhow - I am interested in hearing what others have to say about this type of stock and the pricing they see, set or would pay and why.