Cosmo
02-24-2016, 10:54 PM
Everyone thinks Discus are expensive, and I guess from one vantage point they are. I mean $100 plus for one fish isn't like going to petco and buying some gupies.
But.. from a wider perspective, Discus are dirt cheap compared what they used to cost, believe it or not :p
I got my first Discus when I was in my mid to late 20s, which was back in the 70s. I'm thinking the first ones I bought were about $35 for a 3in Wild Blue (wilds was all there was back then). After I moved to Los Angeles in 1980 I started buying Discus from an Asian importer, never knew what country they were from (they weren't Chinese) but they has some beautiful little fish that sold for $75 to $100 for a 3 incher, thinking back I believe this was the beginning of today's domestic Discus, although none back then had anywhere near the color variations available today. Kind of like fancy Wild Blue's with a little bit of a flair. They used to call me first whenever they got a shipment in, I think I had 6 tanks at the time, mostly small ones.
Anyway, you might be saying that this sounds like Discus cost the same in the 80s as they do now, right. I mean, $75 is $75 right?? Not exactly.
Unfortunately, the dollar has lost a great deal of it's value over the years. In the early 80s you could buy a nicley equipped Chevy Monte Carlo SS for 12 Grand - Camaro would have been about the same. Most "non Cadilac" cars sold for between 12K and 14K - and I'm not talking stripped down models. Today these same cars would cost upwards of 30 or 40 grand or more.
So, had the cost of Discus gone up in a similar fashion, we would be paying 3 or 4 hundred dollars for a 3in Discus today, yet the price is still in the neighborhood of $75 (depending on the fish of course). Why?
Back in the day all or most fish available were wilds. They had to be caught and transported in relatively small batches. The Discus farms in Asia were at best in their infancy, and there was no such thing as German Discus that I was aware of.
Today they are raised on highly efficient farms for pennies each and shipped in large quantities. at least, that's my theory.
and I'm sticking to it
fwiw :p
But.. from a wider perspective, Discus are dirt cheap compared what they used to cost, believe it or not :p
I got my first Discus when I was in my mid to late 20s, which was back in the 70s. I'm thinking the first ones I bought were about $35 for a 3in Wild Blue (wilds was all there was back then). After I moved to Los Angeles in 1980 I started buying Discus from an Asian importer, never knew what country they were from (they weren't Chinese) but they has some beautiful little fish that sold for $75 to $100 for a 3 incher, thinking back I believe this was the beginning of today's domestic Discus, although none back then had anywhere near the color variations available today. Kind of like fancy Wild Blue's with a little bit of a flair. They used to call me first whenever they got a shipment in, I think I had 6 tanks at the time, mostly small ones.
Anyway, you might be saying that this sounds like Discus cost the same in the 80s as they do now, right. I mean, $75 is $75 right?? Not exactly.
Unfortunately, the dollar has lost a great deal of it's value over the years. In the early 80s you could buy a nicley equipped Chevy Monte Carlo SS for 12 Grand - Camaro would have been about the same. Most "non Cadilac" cars sold for between 12K and 14K - and I'm not talking stripped down models. Today these same cars would cost upwards of 30 or 40 grand or more.
So, had the cost of Discus gone up in a similar fashion, we would be paying 3 or 4 hundred dollars for a 3in Discus today, yet the price is still in the neighborhood of $75 (depending on the fish of course). Why?
Back in the day all or most fish available were wilds. They had to be caught and transported in relatively small batches. The Discus farms in Asia were at best in their infancy, and there was no such thing as German Discus that I was aware of.
Today they are raised on highly efficient farms for pennies each and shipped in large quantities. at least, that's my theory.
and I'm sticking to it
fwiw :p