SuE: Maybe I'm wrong, but I didn't figure most hobbyists had the space to
hold 1000, or even 500, plants from flask or compot to first bloom. It's a
pretty long time ... And e-baying 2 flasks only gets you down from 1000 to
900.

I don't agree with you about the higher percentage of die-off. We don't baby
our plants, here -- if they can't take the local environment, they just die.
We would much rather lose plants early, than after we've put 3-5 years into
them, bringing them up to flowering, so we practice Darwin "survival of the
fittest." Hobbyists are more likely to fuss over them than we are... and
thereby keep the weak along with the strong.

No dispute that pitching the unsellable is a cost of doing business. But
all costs of doing business have to somehow get plugged back into the price
of what one does sell, if one wants to remain in business ... Kenni


The easy answer on that is that they will have a higher percentage die
off from compot stage to first bloom. So they see if they can e-bay a
flask or two, double their expected ability to handle plants and pitch
the rest. Cost of doing business is sometimes the unsellable gets
tossed even if you paid for it.
SuE
http://orchids.legolas.org/gallery/orchids