Coral Pricing?

[St1ckyReefer]

What does everyone use for reference when either pricing their own corals for sale or checking to see if they are getting reasonable prices?

[bnumair]

its hard to reference corals like that due to that fact all corals differ in shape size and coloration. So over time you just have to kinda know the market. You can do a general search on Google and see if you find something close enough.

[St1ckyReefer]

Yeah thats sort of what i thought but its still really hard because different sites vary so much... Is there any sort of "common guidelines" you could help me out with?

Like from what i see common zoanthid frags sell for like 5 bucks a polyp, i find that ridiculous because that would put a small colony in the hundreds... Then i have seen the large colonies for 50-60 bucks.. And thats just the common softies:headwally:

Should hobbyist be matching LFS and online prices, or should they be less? Personally i feel they should be less, but i am new to the hobby, and from what i have seen, people expect just as much if not more for their frags than what the LFS sells them at, unless they are trying to get rid of a lot quickly

[bnumair]

no there is not common guide. you can find the same polyp for $5 and on some website with a really nice photoshop for $20-50 likewise on some sps corals the same way.

[crsswift70]

Check your local reef club forum to get an idea as well. As far as online, a lot depends on how much "pop" the picture pics up from actinic lighting, as bnumair said. Unfortunately ,i was taken recently by a large well known company. I should have paid more attention to the background lighting. If the egg crate looks blue or if the coralline is dark purple, beware. So, a really dark blue and teal coral can be sold for $60 when if you saw it in a full spectrum tank, it would only fetch $20.