Sometimes, you just have to wonder what is going through a persons' mind when they put their horses on the market.
There are so many examples online across the nation, it's a tragedy-or a comedy, take your pick. We are not immune to this up here either, weirdness abounds. I'd like to say it's because the brains are fried under the Midnight Sun, but alas, with our cloudy summer this excuse doesn't apply.
Yesterday, I was chuckling when I read an ad on Craigslist for an "Appalussa" horse for sale. I was mildly interested so clicked on the ad and no information as to age, sex or height was included. A few hours later the ad was revised to include a lousy picture, age of 7, and a mare who seemingly has done quite a lot. Topped off by a cowboy in large hat, chaps or chinks, white shirt and vest *rolls eyes* The gear was so big and the photo so poor, you couldn't see anything of the horse for sale. Priced at $3500, well over the going market.
We have some locals attempting to downsize for whatever reason....money, hay supply, lost interest-there are as many reasons to sell a horse as there are people, and few are doing a very good job of it.
One gal I know has 3 for sale....she attempts to get ads on CL regularly, and they just as quickly get flagged down. Its pretty obvious that both riding horses are very well trained, but someone has a vendetta against the seller so the ads are replaced about as quickly as they are flagged off. Unfortunately, her action shots don't show the horse(s) conformation well, are too distant for true assessment, and she uses the same ones over and over. Until she either adjusts hew asking price or works at better marketing photos, she will continue to feed them.
Another gal has a very pretty grulla mare for sale, and a grulla yearling filly. None of her sale photos show the horses well groomed and posed, and her prices are fairly steep considering their pedigrees and training. One is currently lame too, the one I have attempted to email the seller about *four* times over the past two months. The seller will not reply to me-so yes, I got it-no sale to me, period. This is the same seller that refused to take in a new boarder because of me, and this blog. *rolls eyeballs* Now, you'd think income from a boarder, who contacted her on my own recommendation, would be worth a reply-but nope. Better off not to sell the horse, or have a boarder.....right? But hey, it's her horse(s), she can do business as choses and it's no skin off my nose but you gotta wonder about someone's mind set when they categorically refuse contact based on......what? One does not know, and I surely don't-heresay, I would bet.
Then another local breeder is downsizing....about 18 months behind the curve of selling. This person has been shameless at self promotion (hey, nothing wrong with that!) and since she got in a snit about something she did to herself, she now uses CL as her primary marketing tool. Her ads get flagged down asap, because of the content, but at least her pricing is more in line with the current market. This person also likes to think rather a lot of herself and her position within the horse community and has been known to post some rather strange things on CL from time to time, all for "community service" or whatever. So while the rest of us are scratching our heads over the content of her ramblings....the phone is still not ringing-who wants to do business with someone who seems unstable, at least in print?
The horses that are selling, are the ones under about $1500....I have been watching some ads come down and down in price over the past three or four months. If they had just started at near their lower threshold to begin with, they wouldn't be facing feeding them all winter-but it's their own conviction, that their poorly bred, unregistered mutt with marginal training must be worth a bunch because after all, it has color (or whatever)....I feel for the sellers who no doubt have a legitimate need to rehome these horses-but can't seem to grasp that the market here is tanking.
So here I am, idly "in the market" myself, and the one mare I had a mild interest in-the seller won't do business with me. Hey, not my problem, no harm no foul, but seriously silly. So I kept looking, and by chance I stumbled across another mare. It turns out I know the owner, a little bit. I eventually manage to make time to go see this horse in person. What a nice impression she made on me, good enough that I think we'll have a new resident at my barn, just for me. Pretty pretty girl, with loads of Appytude to boot ;) It will be the weekend before I can get pictures here, so stay tuned!
3 comments:
Oh, come on, TJ. Surely you know all those horses on CL are worth the prices! Just ask the sellers! I've given up on any realistic pricing up here. Fugly rants about the lower 48 market, but I think ours is as bad or worse with unrealistic prices for marginal animals. I have been on the lookout for good deals and have yet to find anything I'd consider. The ones in a reasonable price range nearly always have 'history' -- which is usually not disclosed by the seller -- and anything that doesn't have history or major issues is priced so high I'm always hopeful I'll find a potential GP horse when I go look. *sigh* Hasn't happened yet.
What I find, as you well know, are marginally trained, marginally bred, worn out, arthritic, fuglies. Nothing wrong with a fugly and I've owned my share, but I'm not going to pay $5500 for one, sorry.
The Outside market isn't any better, I know. I just saw a horse brought in from Outside because the buyer couldn't find what they wanted up here. Nice looking horse, too young to have training issues, good pre-purchase. I was thinking they'd done okay until I heard the price. Somebody saw them coming. For that money I could buy a finished horse with a performance record.
I too wonder what it will take for the market to correct here. It's going to be an interesting winter.
Good luck on your potential new acquisition!
Well, I don't mind paying a bit over L48 market-but that doesn't mean that every horse is going to be worth the hauling cost tacked on either. A $200 canner is still a $200 canner, even up here. Or rather, should be!
I ended up giving away a well bred filly, out of proven parents (show and performance) and she was a knockout-I had originally priced her near what similar foals/yearlings bring of that lineage in the Midwest. No takers of course, and the economy was much better then. It was a good lesson in "breeding" here, and I lost well over five grand in that little experiment. It was worth every penny, in hindsight.
There are some real performance bargains in the L48 if you are careful and know what you are doing. And each time I see nondescript horses with "baggage" listed locally for a large sum, I am thinking about Joe at TBFriends, who has placed over 100 Thoroughbred horses in less than a month-nearly all were free-at most, three or four hundred. And many of them, fresh off the tracks with minor lameness issues that simply need time and attention to rectify.
We haven't reached that point yet, and I don't think we ever will, but one can hope, yes?
Well, you know, got get all that hay money the horse ate, isn't that considered applicable *value*.
You would think they would figure out that it's going to cost a whole lot more holding out for the asking price then just getting the horse into a good home.
And then there are those who start reducing the amount of feed they are putting into the horse thinking it is going to sell soon (why waste the feed, huh?). Next thing they know they have a rack of bones for sale. One seller told me that it is much more healthy to keep the horse lean then overweight....there wasn't a single horse on his property that was even optimal weight! He got a visit from AC a few days later.
I too don't understand why people take such crappy pictures of their horses when advertising.
He's the brown one next to the lighter brown one between the black and red one. Or, he is the one on the 10 acre pasture grazing with his pasture mate. Conformation? Where is it?
I did get a kick out of the "Appalusa" for sale.
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