What's a fair price for a pre-bonsai maple?

[GreatLakesBrad]

Great thread.

Will be trying the tourniquet method on a few over winter and see how they compare - ring bark removal has worked well for me on acer P’s so far but I do like the idea of being able to do these during winter downtime.

 

[rockm]

This particular nursery I shop at only has a few Shishigashira for sale at one time. They are definitely not a volume seller of those, so the high price is somewhat understandable. Their JM selection is mostly made up of standard Ap and Bloodgood, with various other cultivars peppered in. They want $200 for a 2' tall Shishi in a one square foot wooden planter box. It's insane. That's why I went ahead and paid $375 for the much bigger one. If I want to develop the air layers and grow them out for a year or two before selling them, I'd make enough money to cover the cost of the original tree and then some.

I mean, if International Bonsai can ask $825 for this 15" tall grafted Shishi, then there's hope for me to make money off mine. At least mine will all be on their own roots.

This tree is priced not because of its nebari alone (graft is not all that bad from the front). It is priced because of its overall maturity as a bonsai, not really as a piece of cut down stock. It has developed primary, secondary and even tertiary branching (from what I can see in the photos). The primary branching is substantial and probably took almost a decade. It is not simple matter of a thicker trunk. Given that is not a typical variety found in such a developed state, $825 is probably in the ballpark, although it is on the high side.

 

[flor1]

When I look at a tree that I may want to buy I set a price in my mind and then as a rule offer 20% less .
You can always go up in price but your never coming down .
Thats always cash amazing how much more room sellers have room to negotiate.

 

[dbonsaiw]

As far as soil goes, I've only ever bought and used the Bonsai Jack standard organic mix. I need to order a lot more with all the trees I'll be moving from nursery pots with standard soil to flats with bonsai soil in the spring. I'm going to build several shallow boxes out of cedar fence boards from Lowe's Home Improvement.

I like the Bonsai Jack universal soil and purchased it in bulk (the savings are large). I used that mixed with some peat moss for additional water retention. The boxes I've built were on the larger size, 14"X14"X3.5" (and larger). Took about 2 gallons to fill it. It's pretty wild cutting off massive amounts of roots from the potted trees to fit them into the box.

 

[AcerAddict]

I like the Bonsai Jack universal soil and purchased it in bulk (the savings are large). I used that mixed with some peat moss for additional water retention. The boxes I've built were on the larger size, 14"X14"X3.5" (and larger). Took about 2 gallons to fill it. It's pretty wild cutting off massive amounts of roots from the potted trees to fit them into the box.

I'm making a variety of box sizes, with the largest probably being 16" x 16". I'll also make some 14" x 14", 12" x 12", and 10" x 10". With my 12" miter saw and nail gun, it won't take me but an hour to put together several boxes. If I feel like being fancy, I might even make hexagon boxes instead of the standard square.

 

[GreatLakesBrad]

$499 with a reserve on FB Auctions…

 

[leatherback]

$499 with a reserve on FB Auctions…

Did you buy this.?

 

[GreatLakesBrad]

Did you buy this.?

I did not / would not. Just sharing

 

[leatherback]

I did not / would not. Just sharing

Pfiew.. Was slightly worried there!

 

[dbonsaiw]

As a case study for us nubes, could someone share their perspectives on this tree (nebari, trunk, movement, branches, potential)? Price aside, what do you see? When I look at this, I don't see much going on nebari-wise, that 90-degree angle doesn't look right and looks permanent, I don't see anything by way of ramification and the trunk isn't large.

 

[GreatLakesBrad]

As a case study for us nubes, could someone share their perspectives on this tree (nebari, trunk, movement, branches, potential)? Price aside, what do you see? When I look at this, I don't see much going on nebari-wise, that 90-degree angle doesn't look right and looks permanent, I don't see anything by way of ramification and the trunk isn't large.

I see inverse taper that will take years to resolve in a bonsai pot. I also see a trident maple that could be grown to that size in the ground in 2-3 seasons. There is some ramification of branches, and the roots have been reduced enough to get into that smaller pot. I agree with you that the angle of the trunk would need to be adjusted. The inverse taper issue is what stands out the most to me.

 

[dbonsaiw]

I haven't seen nearly enough bonsai to be able to value them properly. I'm not in the market to purchase anything really expensive, don't have a heck of a lot of trees and basically buy on impulse. I'm still shocked that there appears to be such a large gap in the market with more developed trees so hard to find. Lots of pre-bonsai, sticks in the pot and other people's rejects, but nothing that screams "buy me, I have 5 years of great bonsai development". I recently came across a tree I'm tempted to buy solely based on its nebari. The trunk is barely 1" thick but the nebari is nice and radial - almost like a mini Walter Pall nebari. I thought it was 2" thick and at $250 was ready to pounce. It's only 1" so I'm second guessing myself.

 

[Hoyonokuma]

Not saying like I'd buy any of these in a heartbear, but I find the price of prebonsai material on this fb page to be more accessible, and somehow fair, tbh

 

[leatherback]

could someone share their perspectives on this tree (nebari, trunk, movement, branches, potential

Just a quick visual inspection, based on one picture so might be right unfair. But, for the sake of discussion, here some things I think to see. Important to realize, this is just raw stock. So individual branch development is less important.

In this case you have lots of small branches but are you going to get them in the right places? If I look at the trunk, it seems there are some stretches without nodes. I have backes in green where I would expect natural backbutting to be possible. The second trunk segment seems to have one large bit without nodes, thus, without natural budding.

The nebari as commented above needs a lot of work; Two nice wide roots to the side, but besides that nothing is visible. If there are good roots, they are much lower than the 2 we can see (Blue)

After the first chop (I black my guesses) a lot of small branches were allowed to grow leading to a lumpy swollen front (red). Only a serious amount of ongrowing (Think: Double the trunk) will get near to cleaning this up, and even then it will remain mottled.

All in all not a tree to not have if you are looking for a trident. But in my eyes no 500.USD tree as the long-term potential is not great.

 

[dbonsaiw]

a lot of small branches were allowed to grow leading to a lumpy swollen front

To prevent this from happening in the first place, what are best practices? Is it simply to not allow multiple branches to grow in the same place, like how we prevent reverse taper?

 

[dbonsaiw]

One more thought - could it be that the tree was naturally bending to the right, he cut the trunk straight (considering the angle of the trunk, that would be almost a vertical cut) where you mark the black line, and the new leader grew straight up from the top of the cut, thereby producing this awkward 90 degree angle? It looks almost flat on the right and not the kind of reverse taper one would expect from too many branches in one place. I am talking from my rear as I have no experience with this (but never want my trees to look like that).

Looking forward to spring when I can make my own mistakes with the cuts. Who knows, you may just see my rejects for sale online one day (I'm keeping the nice ones).

 

[leatherback]

Is it simply to not allow multiple branches to grow in the same place, like how we prevent reverse taper?

I ragularly rub emerging buds from places where I do not want branches to grow, yes. But, sometimes it is a matter of a few weeks and the back of a tree is full of them. It happens, I suppose

 

[parhamr]

$499 with a reserve on FB Auctions…
View attachment 416083

Rather than asking “is this tree worth $500?” We could ask, “has somebody put $500 of effort into this tree?”

I think they have. It’s not unreasonable to, as a contractor or sole proprietor, ask for 2x your target rate of compensation in order to cover losses, overhead, and benefits.

A very nontrivial amount of bonsai pricing is from scarcity and the longer term risks of investing effort into something that may fail. But the pot in that example is worth something like $6 wholesale, the soil is a trivial expense, and just about any nursery could keep a trident maple alive for 5 years. They’ve artificially constrained supply and try to lean on the impression of unique rarity to explain their pricing.

Finally, could somebody put $500 of effort into a trident maple and produce something better? Yes. Telperion regularly sold their younger, less developed materials for $250 to $350. They sold their nicer materials for $500 to $1000. That material showed real value. It was tragically undervalued by cheap practitioners.

 

[leatherback]

I think I have posted it before. But as a comparison, this was much less than 500, "Japan import container filler material"


And after a year of cleaning up

 

[namnhi]

$499 with a reserve on FB Auctions…
View attachment 416083

Inflation is getting out of hand on this price for this one.