Bounce
 

Are bounce mushrooms so expensive because they bud infrequently? I'm guessing not all mushrooms grow like crazy...?

They are outlandishly expensive because a fool and his money were lucky to ever get together in the first place. A lot are coming in wild now, as soon as people stop overpaying for them the prices will dive bomb.

Always hate that saying. To some, $600-$1000 isn't all that much.

I agree 100 % with this.

People who charge these prices are simply gouging. If someone wants to pay $ 600 - $1000 for a single polyp, is real sad. For those who want to pay it, go ahead. The rest of us do not.

Mooch

These things are common, once the divers are pointed to collect the UGLY mushrooms with warts price will come down. Last one I saw at wholesale was $200 for one. When they didn't have a name they were $30 for a rock covered in them.

So mainly you're paying for the name? Essentially?

You're paying for the fad, not because they grow slowly. It will pass, then the price will go, then the availability will too. In the town I used to live in back in Indiana pulsing xenia had a 6-12 month cycle:

It consistently ran $30 for a frag at the one LFS in town.
People would get it, grow it like a weed, and frag it.
Once the local market saturated people would drop prices, then start giving it away to get it out of their tanks.
The LFS would stop carrying it because it wouldn't sell (why buy from them when it is free).
People would stop growing it because it wouldn't bring them $, or because they tired of it taking over their tank.
Suddenly one day you wouldn't be able to find it. The LFS would start to stock it again, and the cycle would repeat.

Oddly the same thing happens with purple yumas there, I'm just sad I didn't see that until I moved away.

While your example is local, this type of boom and bust can occur across the country bc internet sales then?

I would assume so. I've had times when I've gone looking for what seemed like a basic item and not seen it.

I'm just speculating it this point, but online sales in bulk have two sources, importers and propagation places. If they decide something isn't profitable, they'll stop stocking it. I'm sure someone will always have it, but I could see availability decreasing. I don't really follow online store coral sales much, but can you think of something that used to be common but that you don't really see anymore?

About to trade one of my JB babies a friend gave me for a split of a WWC Bounce, so pretty excited about that. I pay high prices for acros, but that's cause I'm crazy like that. Still not convinced they aren't injecting them with another corals proteins to get that reaction...

If they were injecting them would you still have the same reaction after 2 years and would the babies also have the same reaction?

The WWC Bounce has been around for a few years and I have yet to see another wild one show up just like it. Most other shrooms you can find multiples of them. I still see shrooms today that were being collected back in the 90's.

It also broke the record for single most expensive polyp ever sold at $6,000.00

Agreed. I keep hearing that more are being collected, but yet to see proof of those statements.

It is annoying though that any rhodactis with a bubble or two is now being referred to as a bounce whether or not they are actually unique or pretty for that matter. Brown mushroom with a clear bubble for sale... its a bounce... $400 each. :fun4:

May I ask what is the allure?

Does everyone believe they are rare?

Or is it just the visual appeal, the color and the bubble?

Thx.

MUCHO REEF

I currently believe they are rare. As BeanMachine stated, we keep seeing posts claiming they are being imported but I have yet to see that materialize. Until I see proof, I think the WWC Bounce was a one of a kind. Now was that 1 shroom or did they get a rock full of them, I don't know. If there are more than one of certain corals, you will see it show up around the same time at different vendors. There are several examples of this where 2 vendors will half a coral and each puts their name on it. There are other times a wholesaler will get in several pieces of a unique coral and it will show up at several vendors. Again, this never happened with the WWC Bounce. I've seen other "bounce" shrooms show up at different vendors and they each throw a different name on it.

So my take, the WWC Bounce is rare and I really like mine. Now I got it at a great price and I wouldn't pay over a couple hundred for one but that is my limit on any coral. I've wanted a master scoly for many years but I refuse to pay $500 to $1000 for one.

The bounce craze is out of control. I've seen too many shrooms at frag swaps for hundreds of dollars and they have no more than a few bumps on them, not even true bubbles. We've got a couple of LFS that try this but I don't think anyone is buying them. I've seen them calling normal St Thomas shrooms bounces.

Hey thanks for the reply.

I want to have an open conversation with you on this topic as I want to share something with you regarding these shrooms or anyone who wants to join in. No tricks, no darts, no gimmicks, no flames or no games. Just a straight up adult dialogue, can we?

Mooch

Can't say I took his response to be flaming or anything..

My friend, neither did I. I was speaking of the conversation we are about to have.

I know of three different wholesalers who are currently importing them. Two in LA and one in FL, at a price where full big 2-3" mushrooms should retail for $130-200, making small of them worth about $30-40, $50-60 if you want to make a big profit. They post pictures of them on facebook in mushroom groups if you need proof, tons out there it's just the same scammy vendors picking them up and holding them kind of like how diamond companies do.

Said it before I'll say it again: the moment people stop overpaying for them the prices will dive bomb because the supply right now far exceeds the demand. Until then there's too many people who for some reason or another are making the active choice to "currently believe they are rare." 100% of those people coincidentally own a WWC jawbreaker.

I'm not on facebook so can't see anything there. I signed up one time so I could get in on these giveaways vendors do by liking them on facebook. Went back to the account after a few monhts, mind you other than signing up I hadn't been on my account and hadn't liked anything or had any friends, and the account had been taken over by some girl in Asia. No idea how they did it. Apparently they left my email on the account because I had to do a password reset and the email came to me. Closed the account and haven't been back.

Copied from elsewhere

To be clear, very few of the bubbly Rhodactis, even the top shelf rainbow bullseye mushrooms, are anywhere near the same caliber as the O.G. World Wide Corals Bounce Mushroom with the enlarged orange vesicles. But before this shroom earned the title of “bounce”, it was simply a beautifuly colored rainbow Rhodactis with a lot of potential.here is a phenomenon among Rhodactis in particular, in which a certain set of parameters give the corallimorph polyps the cue to develop enlarged pseudotentacles. In some cases the pseudotentacles are branched but in the more familiar instance, the namesake of the bounce shroom is the enlargement of spheroid shaped vesicles.

We’ve actually seen this in the wild, where one large colonial mat of Rhodactis mushrooms will be all one color, and just a select few polyps will display enlarged pseudotentacles. It’s worthwhile to note that we have only seen this development in shallow colonies of Rhodactis, but never in deep water colonies of will Rhodactis.

With these observations in mind, we personally believe that lighting is the main factor in the development of bounce, flame and other enlarged portions of Rhodactis polyps. It is completely reasonable to believe that the new lighting technologies we are currently using, particularly with huge spikes in blue spectrum, are partly responsible for the surge of the Bounce phenomenon we are seeing in more and more Rhodactis.

Aquarists have noticed unusual formations and developments in aquarium grown Rhodactis mushrooms for years now, but the development of the OG Bounce Shroom really put the phenomenon on the map. The huge demand for Bounce and similar Rhodactis shrooms has encouraged collectors to round up lots of colonies and single polyps of bullseye shrooms, and we recently had the chance to see a large crop of these in Jakarta before being distributed to the global aquarium market.

The basket full of rainbow bullseye and proto-bounce shrooms we looked over at ReefMaster Indonesia may look like quite a haul. Keep in mind that these are the cream of the crop, with three more kinda nice green Rhodactis for every one truly colorful rhodactis shroom with the potential for enlarged and bounce vesicles.

Furthermore, these thirty polyps are the only supply for a single exporter for a month, and these will be scattered to better importers and reef shops in all four corners of the globe. Such a limited supply countered by an overwhelming demand has made just about every kind of decent Rhodactis a pretty hot commodity.

These wholesalers sell to the public at all? What are their names if you don't mind me asking?

None of those look like the WWC OG Bounce bro. I've seen the same on Facebook as well.

Jawbreakers are definitely not rare. And neither are the OG Bounces now, its just they are really killer in person and highly sought after.

His phone wouldn't get the orange but did buy from WWC. Trading one of my baby JBs for his baby split here.

http://s1240.photobucket.com/user/Tw...d11yi.mp4.html