Unfair Pricing?

[Ludwig Venter]

Surely, the price of a fish should be based on demand and supply.... Why is it then, that (for instance) the ordinary "Black Moore" goldish is more than 3 x the price of the "Commet" goldfish..... Yet, they both breed easily, produce the same number of offspring; take the same time to mature etc. etc. Maybe it's just in my area, but there are many examples of this.

 

[shelaghfishface]

no idea on that one but fish prices range vastly where i live, in one shop a neon is 75p and in another £1.50.. and the funny thing is the cheaper ones come from very small 5 tank pet shop ... starnge but true

 

[markandhisfish]

i saw on a site a scarlet plecco ............ £155 !!!!

my most expensive fish is my yellow spotted plec £4.95
then my 3 pearl gourami £3.50 each

 

[markandhisfish]

my most expensive fish is my yellow spotted plecco £4.95
then my 3 pearl gourami £ 3.50 each

 

[andywg]

Surely, the price of a fish should be based on demand and supply.... Why is it then, that (for instance) the ordinary "Black Moore" goldish is more than 3 x the price of the "Commet" goldfish..... Yet, they both breed easily, produce the same number of offspring; take the same time to mature etc. etc. Maybe it's just in my area, but there are many examples of this.

You have got it in the first sentence: basic economics. In truth, anything is only worth as much as people are willing to pay for it.
Therefore, if the price of a different fish is higher, it is because people are prepared to pay more for it: greater demand = higher price.

 

[Colin_T]

black moors grow slower than comet or common goldfish. Many of their young don't turn out to be black moors either. They often have up to half their young turn out to be bronze or orange moors.
Comets and common goldfish get bigger than moors and as such can produce a lot more eggs, and the fry will be better quality and have fewer deformities. The more unusual goldfish can have huge numbers of deformed young that get culled.

 

[jarcher1390]

Black moors as said above not turn out to be all black all to do with genetics. There will be more deformities with black moors( cross breeding/ mutations) so more culling is needed reducing salable stock and labour to do the culling. Plus they are not as robust as the commons because of there body shape so more likely to die in transit.
Many reason and last but not least there actual demand. they can sell them at a lot more as people are more willing to pay that extra bit.
we sell black moor at roughly 3.95 and commons of roughly same size about 1.50
Jonny

 

[Dorkhedeos]

Well, the more people want it, the more it costs. Think of cow dooki, people can sell that crap at homedepot for like 5 bucks bag. You have to pay people to take human turd. Gross analogy, but I guess it works.

 

[Colin_T]

coming from Elmo that is nothing new

 

[Tokis-Phoenix]

I think people also need to consider the costs the pet shop is having to pay the breeders for their fish- some pet shops may have to order some fish which come from breeders a lot further away than other fish etc. Availability in the local area of a fish is a major deciding factor of the price the fish is paid for- an extreme example would be arrowana's, in their native area poor people eat these fish for food, but over here people can pay hundreds of dollars/pounds for such fish etc. With the credit crunch/food crisis/oil crisis/war costs etc increasing in every area right now, i would expect that all fish and fish products will go up in cost, particularly those fish which have to be transported long distances.

 

[OldMan47]

I think Ludwig had the answer in the question. The laws of supply and demand are not the same as supply only. The demand side says that people are willing to pay 3 times as much for a black moor. Because of that, enough are produced to sell at that price while those breeding comets have to take whatever people are willing to pay. If the person selling black moors gets greedy, the sales will drop but until then that person will make more money because the fish are more in demand. It really doesn't matter how much it costs to produce a fish except to the producer. The market may end up telling the producer that he needs to stop breeding that kind or lose money on every fish.