value

[Chris J. Durden]

Hey, just check the Scott, Stanley Gibbons and Michel catalogues to see how 
many *Agrias* you could buy for the cost of each of the 500 most valuable 
stamps.
    This argument is rather ridiculous.
What is the value of the rarest butterfly?
What is the value of the rarest stamp?
No comparison, eh!
.................Chris Durden

________________________________________________________________________
Message: 4
Date: Wed, 29 May 2002 07:52:07 -0700
From: Paul Cherubini <monarch at saber.net>
Subject: Re: Commercial value of butterflies
Michael Gochfeld wrote:
 > It's not an underground at all. There is a whole list serve
 > devoted to the sale and purchase of specimens (both live and dead).
 > It's the commercial aspect of butterfly specimens that worries
 > conservationists (birders and butterfliers don't buy and trade specimens).
 > Not many species command hundreds of dollars,
Mike, an article in Outside Magazine hints at an underground
industry where big dollars are paid for perfect rare / endangered
butterflies and moths:
http://www.outsidemag.com/magazine/0196/9601is.html
"Although their case is the most prominent, Kral, Skalski, and
Grinnell are not the only collectors to have run afoul of the Fish &
Wildlife Service. Last July a commercial dealer named Charles
Kondor was sentenced to five months in prison in Wisconsin.
The indictment that same month of a collector in Texas, John
William Kemner, who specialized in Mexican butterflies, is
rumored to implicate some of the most important museums in
the country, from the Smithsonian on down. Butterfly poaching
and smuggling cases have been investigated independently in
Britain, India, and China, where a pair of alpine silks was
reportedly sold on the Japanese market for $37,000."
I just wanted to know whether or not the motivation for
the collecting and breeding of rare species in the Skalski-Kral-Grinnel
case was to make money via underground trading or
the motivation was simply to accumulate the worlds finest
collection of rare butterflies (with the recently passed Fish &
Wildlife endangered species laws getting in the way from time to time)
Paul Cherubini



 
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