Re: [Killietalk] Re: Killietalk Digest, Vol 23, Issue 7

[Scott Davis <unclescott at prodigy_net>]

> If you want more fish in the show, direct more of
> the auction price of the 
> fish to those who entered them.

Larry,

You will recall that the auction prices were plunging
towards the end last Sunday. While it was not as
dramatic as what often happens at regional shows (or
affiliate meetings), there is a point beyond which the
glut of killies available at a show is not productive.
Indeed, I wonder how many of those fish, attendees are
induced to bid on, so we can go home at the end, even
survive, since when we (and I do mean we) are trying
to be helpful, we are scanning our memories for
acquaintances which might like a pair of killies, or
wondering where the heck we are going to put them and
when we will have the time to care for them.

There were more new and rare species selections than I
realized this year, until helping a little with their
bagging before the auction. One observer, just in
speculative conversation several years ago, wondered
if the national's auction couldn't survive just on
N&RS items. I would be sorry to see that, because
there were still wonderful, healthy and robust adult
killies in the show, many of them new to their
purchasers, (not all of those adjectives apply all of
the time to N&RS fish and never have) which many of us
would love to take home.

A lot of killie people - students, newly weds, former
students trying to get started while paying off
college loans, those of us down-sized in the economy,
city dwellers trying to pay the rent, suburbanites
trying to pay the mortgage, parents trying to do all
they can for their children, many of us doing more
work than we did a few years ago for the same real
income, and retirees on modest incomes, especially
those faced with staggering prescription and medical
costs - have to very carefully husband their funds at
auction. As relative inexpensive as the killie hobby
is - vis-a-vis a lot of the other aquatic specialties
- sadly those factors and other "life stuff" things
that happen to us, keep some people out of the hobby.

One can tell the frugal aquarists. They will keep
score of what they sold at auction (or the fish sale
room) and buy accordingly. They may be the wisest of
hobbyists. They produce more killies for auction than
they might otherwise and are careful to only purchase
a certain quantity of new fish. Those new acquisitions
will get pretty good care.

That must apply to most killinuts. Most of them deal
with limitations and self control graciously. However
there was one guy, years ago, known as "So and So The
Whiner".

The fish sale room was first proposed and started at
the 1985 nation, over shocked and worried concerns
that the AKA would never be the same. The club that
started that was, and is, mostly made up of killinuts
who fall in one or several of those frugal categories
mentioned above. The fish sale room was designed to be
a modest financial help to killie people while making
some rare fish available to ordinary aquarists would
couldn't afford the increasingly high auction prices
of some of the then hot new killies. It also freed
hotel room sellers from having to stay in their room
and helped the host club defray some of the expenses
of hosting the show. It was a compromise between the
altruistic approach to an all donation national and an
event where ordinary people could get more involved in
the hobby.

Could the AKA survive a more commercial approach to
the hobby? Sure. Numbers might even grow as some
people joined the hobby to make money beyond the few
bucks brought in by killie club auction, F&E listing
or a couple of Internet auctions. But I would bet that
entries in the national (buffeted this year by the 
fear of and realities over carrying killies on the
airlines or mailng them to the show) would not
significantly rise.

And the spirit of the hobby might profoundly change.

All the best!
Scott
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