About Kittycats and their prices.

[Kayleigh McMillan]

(03-30-2012 10:26 AM)Piraiyah Novikov Wrote:  People should menagerie more if they are serious about the breeding game. Good job on getting rid of the excess amount of cats, TS!!! *applause*

We breeders need to take MUCH more responsibility here! Everyone know how supply and demand works. Supply is our biggest enemy.
Menagerie is NOT a bad place, not for the cat and not for the market!
Menageried cats will also always stay in your pedigree so you can backtrack, which is VERY useful for a professional breeder.

The investment of expensive furs is that you get tools to make even more gracious cats, so never expect to sell that cat you bought, maybe not even the first or second generation offspring.
Simply use them as tools.
Actually, simply REFUSE to sell them for the market's sake!
To put it bluntly, "kill off" the parents once you get a better offspring. The more I menagerie, the more I save in all sorts of costs.
Don't force them onto an already exploding market!

Like Noc said; Don't hang out at the same places too much! In my humble experience, there is a HUGE differenence between different auction sites and hour of the day. Unfortunately, being in euro zone myself I try to join these early auctions as much as I can to support them, but the fact is that they rarely pull enough people. When that's the case, you need to really plan what kind of cat you bring there.
Different places actually does have different demands of cats!

Some furs never go out of fashion either, a good old russian for instance. Some furs come back in fashion when we haven't seen them in a while.
Stay focused and try to sense these things as they come along.
If I sense that one of my lines are producing cats that are worth less than +-1000L$, I simply get rid of it and keep the boxes for future use, because I know it wont pay off. It never does!
And with the boxes still in inventory I never feel I have lost anything.

Collection cats is a new exciting market. I have tp'ed around the whole grid looking for people that doesn't breed KC anymore but keeping the old collectible cats as pets or decoration, and I actually found several who has been willing to sell! Horse breeders usually keep a few. Be creative like this!

And another thing.. Don't give away really good cats, as this hurts the market as well. If you quit, please menagerie.
Being a moderator in KittyCats Swappers & Givers, I regularly see people giving away collection cats etc.
I prefer to menagerie the better ones to not overload the market.

My cat economy has overall been very good since start. I think I might be a bit more flexible than most.
I also try to make beautiful cats, I never dealed much with the newest furs. Nothing is more boring than that 1-traited siamese flame which exists in a million copies.
Experience tells us it wont sell after a few weeks, so don't!

This was just my take on this.

I Totally agree with this post:-)
Cattery management by using menagerie wisely is so so so important if not crucial!
For the budget, for the market and keep better kittens over their less good parents seems wise and is what I do as well.
It is perfectly possible to breed with fun in a relative small cattery and make super kitties menagerie is our friend.
And we lose nothing by keeping projects boxed as we quit them for the time being and work on them in later instance.

---

(03-30-2012 11:15 AM)Saga Felix Wrote:  I must say that I do not agree that KittyCatS are in any sort of danger of dying due to 2nd market prices declining - rather, this is something that happens ALL the time in ALL breedables, and every now and again someone will panic due to it and make fire-sales.
-And someone will think that they can take something that is currently worth 20k, breed it out, and still get 20k. No, that is not the way it works - it never has and it never will, not in KittyCats and not in any other breedable, ever.

If you want to get your money back, you need to take that 20k-cat and IMPROVE it - add traits, combine the nice fur with some nice eyes etc... THEN you get your money back.

If I had bought a tawny for 50k when they first came out and just bred it to another tawny, I would not have a lot of boxes with 3-4 traited tawnies, and I could only get like 500 for them today - and I would panic and yell "The Sky Is Falling!" because I could not get my investment back.
Instead, I started a loooong project with adding traits and eyes to my tawnies, and before I was done, the tawny-fur in itself is worth almost nothing... BUT because no one else apparently had the patience to breed 9-traited tawnies, mine are still in demand. I breed them carefully, and improve them ever so often by replacing parents with their better kittens etc.

Meanwhile, I started doing the same to Aby. Black Silver - and despite being extremely unlucky with my cats hiding Aby. Black Silver for a long time, they finally (at the age of 50 or so) made me a very nice little boy that is now growing up and is founding my new breed with that fur. -Will I make LOTS of money on that? No, I will not - before I am ready to sell these, "normal" Aby.Black Silvers will sell for 2k or something - but they will sell for decent prices way over what "just" the fur currently brings, people will appreciate them, and they will be extremely useful in breeding to whoever buys them. -And I get the satisfaction of being able to say that yes, this is a good cat, and yes, I earned whatever sale-price it brings me with months of work on this particular breed.

I would never have gotten to that point if I had invested 50k in 2 Aby. Black Silvers and just bred them together. It just doesn't work that way. If you do not IMPROVE what breeds you have, you will not make your investment back. -You can improve your breeds by sheer luck, or well-planned breeding. -I did both, and both are fun - but the well-planned stuff is the way to go in the long run.

I think the most I ever sold a cat for was 26k, around a year ago - and the most I ever bought one for is way less! I go for the mid-range market - the market where breeding is just too slow to really make the big cash, but where it pays in the long run anyway. -And seen from that side of things, KittyCatS are most definitely not dead, and neither is the 2nd market.

This is what I do with my new furs as well improve them to the max instead of selling a one or two traiter right away.
I like it that way eventhough I miss the hype.
I don't care frankly I take pride in making good kitty's.
Such as the fact I have twinkle shade at the moment I could sell nice but I don't I want to put it on my favorite multi traiter first.
We don't have to hype.