The situation is compounded by a couple of reasons.

Most "good" pet stores don't want to keep anything else than a curly and a red rump. I can name a mountain of them that do this and expanding the hobby becomes difficult when they don't keep some eye candy too even just to spark some ones interest.

I have gone through a million pet stores quite recently to find spiders and the best stores are online, this has draw backs if you are new to the hobby seeing that you cant see the animal live and drool over them.... secondly if you are new to the hobby and you don't know the people in the hobby your trust in online shopping is limited...

This makes things difficult, so yes some guys who think they have spotted a gap are in fact ruining things by flooding the market, My opinion would be that no one should breed anything for the next year. And then secondly if you look at the retail sector, consumer confidence is down plus its currently the most dreaded week in the year so people are not spending right now.

But things do boil down to that the hobby needs to be grown, and marketed better.
Just my opinion

Maybe slightly off the topic - but i recon one of the issues to the market being so saturated with T's is due to the fact that people go out and just go ape shit and buy this T and that T and the next thing they sit with spans of T's and don't find the time to manage there over sized collection so they decide to flog off all the common stuff to make their collection more manageable.

So maybe collectors should focus on getting the T's they really want in their collection instead of ending up with like 6 Curly Hairs that they are just going to get bored of after a while.....

I can agree with you somewhat HS but I do believe in this hobby, its who you know once your a breeder that determines how long you will sit with stock on your shelves.

I was able to sell the rest of my P.irminia slings (35 of them) in one bulk deal not even 5 days ago, so at the end of the day - price is also a big factor to consider if you want to move your stock efficiently.

The breeder also has to put some effort from their half via driving to pet shops and advertising appropriately but as you said breeders should definitely think twice about what they are to breed in the coming months/year.

My 10c :tongue:

Curt wrote: I can agree with you somewhat HS but I do believe in this hobby, its who you know once your a breeder that determines how long you will sit with stock on your shelves.

I was able to sell the rest of my P.irminia slings (35 of them) in one bulk deal not even 5 days ago, so at the end of the day - price is also a big factor to consider if you want to move your stock efficiently.

The breeder also has to put some effort from their half via driving to pet shops and advertising appropriately but as you said breeders should definitely think twice about what they are to breed in the coming months/year.

My 10c :tongue:

Yeah you right Curt, but a year ago, driving around and marketing was not necessary. I have spoken to a few pet shops, but they don't want to buy anything either because they too have experience a sharp decline in Tarantula sales. Around Nov'12, the market just plain vrekked.

People were saving and spending on their holidays and Christmas party's....no money left for hobby....it should stabilize towards the end of FEB.

Been thinking about this alot. The hobby is on its last breath because it seems like the love of keeping spiders has been removed from most, thankfully not all hobbiest. The days of keeping a smithi because it's a fascinating pet to have are gone. most newbies to the hobby want to all have super rare t's,( laughing at the idea of starting on or owning a more common t) which they all want breed the shit out of. Lately it seems like a giant competition about who has the best collection, like it's a status symbol. ..... I'm not saying it's wrong to want cool t's, but do it for the right reasons, because you enjoy keeping spiders.

thats why t sales have been so bad. newbies dont want common t's, crazy as it seems. This combined with everybody trying to be a mass breeder is why i.m.o the hobby is taking a knock