I don’t agree with the high pricing of these corals, but I do enjoy looking at the various colour morphs these corals come in. I own one chalice myself (hoping to add a few more select specimens soon – you see, I’m an SPS fan at heart, always have been) but the ‘trendy’ coral thing doesn’t seem to affect the UK much. There is no such thing as Limited Edition corals this side of the pond, don’t even think Europe has this trend – I’m guessing it is just a US thing? The power marketing (and great online exposure of some amazing looking corals).

I just dont get the fascination with Chalices. Sure, some of them are cool looking, but not nearly as nice as the top tier SPS or acan’s out there. As for the price, it doesn’t really bother me as I know the market will dictate the price. If someone wants to spend $1800 for a coral then more power to them. The only downside is that it will price many reefers out of the market. Those of us not willing to spend the big bucks on chalices will just have to wait until next year, when a “new” coral becomes “hot”, driving down the cost of the chalices.

It is my understanding that chalices grow extremely slow. That may be an overgeneralization, but given that, it seems more likely for a chalice to stay rare than say a new acro — potentially prolonging “the hotness” of a piece.

That being said, this same slow growth would mean it’d take longer to be able to frag a piece you bought than that same acro, which you could frag and still have a nice piece of.

Ignoring that, I personally am not a chalice guy. I like my corals to have some movement to them, even if its just polyps on an sps. That is a beautiful picture though.

I’m sure you made that ebay seller’s month with everyone noe visiting that auction.

I have to completely agree with Sonny. I have no problem with people paying whatever they’d like for any product (I mean really, what business is it of mine), but if it inflates the prices for those of us without limitless income, that’s where I have an issue. I’m not sure if that cause and effect is accurate or not, but it’s the first thing that came to my mind as well. I agree with everyone that the picture is pretty, but if you told me I could pick 20 frags from anywhere on the internet with price not being a factor, I wouldn’t pick it…hell, I don’t even think I’d pick it if you changed that scenario to 20 chalice frags as there are so many beautiful ones out there. To each his/her own though…I don’t fault anyone for their choices as long as it doesn’t hurt anyone (life of any kind).

What I highly disagree with is that the owner of the original colony sold a frag to a well known high end coral vendor and together they hyped this coral up for over a year intending on a huge pay out. To make it worse, there are people defending the owner of the original colony as a ‘true hobbyist’ (whatever that means) because he buys, and sells, nice corals.

I LOVE this hobby and sell corals from time to time so I wouldn’t consider myself a ‘true’ hobbyist. IMO, a true hobbyist that’s purely in it for the fun and enjoyment, gives their frags away…

It upsets me that someone would intentionally hype up their corals for that amount of time to put that kind of price on it. Then again, if people are ignorant to believe the hype, whose fault is it? Both as far as Im concerned.

In the words of Public Enemy, “don’t believe the hype!”

I’ve gone collecting these corals in Vanuatu Fiji and the Solomons, they are not uncommon in any way below 40′ depth. The “bubblegum” and “alien eye” patterns are not normal but i could pull up 50 dinner sized plates of mycedium echinophyllia and oxypora easily in a few hours time. They do not at all grow slowly, most of the chalice corals lay down a fairly thin skeleton that doesn’t encrust over nearby rock, rather grows just over the surface, making whole plates very easy to collect. In the Solomons, I advised my divers to focus on mycediums with pink “eyes” and blueish coenestem , area between the eyes, because our buyer liked those the most. Price is dictated by what people are willing to pay, not difficulty of collection or rarity. Some uncommon and hard to get corals are dirt cheap, goniopora for example is not fun to collect, but must be sold in lots to be worthy of export to meet the very low retail price it demands.

[...] like WWC is famous: The My Miami Chalice Fetches $2,000 | glassbox-design.com __________________ Paul It is the soldier, not the reporter Who has given us freedom of the [...]

@tim ill take your word on the growth rate. I just can’t seem to find much about their growth rates and have been told that / read that most grow slow.

I personally think people must like their corals way more than me or have a lot more money than me to pay these prices, but I don’t see wrongdoing on the seller’s side. This coral they made out to be a high-end luxury item. I don’t see much of a difference between someone hyping their coral and someone hyping their newly released car or purse (coach style) or watch or whatever.

The scammy part may be making this piece seem uber rare, so maybe it’d be better to compare to an antique seller saying their product is super rare when he has 50 of them in the back, but even if they’re common in the ocean, they’re obviously not making it to the locations this buyer frequents (or he wouldn’t pay so much) so from his/her pov its rare enough.

I’m also not sold on the fact that someone payed this much is going to cause a bunch of coral price inflation. How many retailers will even here about this, and how many of those that do will go “oh I better raise my prices $100″ or $50 or even $15. And if they do and I buy it then I payed the market price and got a coral. Its not like we have a right to cheap coral.

All of this has a lot of gray area so I hope this doesn’t come across otherwise.

Be it too much or not, who knows – all I know is that sitting on the side of the fence where a lot of these supposedly “rare” or “unique” corals come from I can’t do anything but laugh it up when I see things like this particular frag pop up. The fact is they’re all overhyped for god knows what reason, inflated to this incredible revere when in reality they’re nothing really that special or exotic, just made to seem it. I guess it follows with a lot of things in the reef hobby, the flavour of the month will always drive sales at ridiculous prices for what seems like mythological reasons to outsiders.

All I know is that I’m glad the craze never caught on here for any of those “rare” things you guys over the other side of the pond go so crazy for – I’ll gladly take $20 GBR Scollys and Acans and Chalices that are identical, if not better than what seems to command prices in the hundreds of dollars there.

Lots of whining going on in here. The solution is simple: dont buy it and move on.

i think its funny to pay those prices, you could book a trip, learn to scuba dive and get you own dinner plate size one for the price of 2 eyes….  the price will drop as it always does