Here is mine,

Speaking of ebay figs.

Anyone know who the seller is for the 5gl. Alma going for $109.95 including shipping? 
Ebay I.D.: iplant-us

Looks very knowledgeable with figs with the info he /she listed.

Until I looked at the figs4fun info page and it looks like the seller cut and paste that info.

A couple years from now, hopefully, the price will come down int my price range.
Plus, it's always nice to have something to look forward to.

Rare plants always command premium prices.  I know people who paid over $600 for a 12"Plumeria cutting.  Try finding a Stemmadenia littoralis or some of the outstanding Asian fragrant plants.  Those prices are coming down but are still high.

Flights to Malta are expensive but that's just the beginning.  Years of relationship and suggestions from friends of friends are priceless.  Growing hundreds of cuttings over dozens of years, moving them back and forth into the garage every winter and spring, evaluating and discarding probably 70%,, mentoring dozens for free - what's the price of it?   If some guy working year in, year out can make $600 on a cutting I think that's great.  He worked 20 years for peanuts.  It's time to get a little return.  For those of us who can't afford it, hang around a while.  People here are outstandingly generous.  Cuttings get spread around - often the sender doesn't even want reimbursement for postage. 

That said, a guy who sells a fig tree for $200 is like a star quarterback or any other celebrity.  The Jon Stuarts of the world are gonna take notice  :)

I guess the fig market is as volatile as the stock market. 

BTW, I'd love to see the folks that have tasted these high end figs rank them in order of preference and describe the timing of bearing, ripening requirements, etc so that when it's my turn I can pick the one I'd like best.  :)

I also doubt there will be a never ending supply of 'what's hot'.  When there are only ten known varieties of a fruit becoming the new best isn't all that hard.  But as unexplored territory shrinks so do our chances of finding unknown varieties and the chance of one of those new varieties being truely outstanding depends on your definition of outstanding.  If you are looking for the top 5% then your chance of finding an outstanding fig is only 5% of the ones you find.  If you find a new fig on 1 trip out of 20 (and that number has to decrease over time) then the chances of finding an outstanding new fig are 0.25%. 

Now there are new varieties bred randomly and perhaps by people all the time.  People doing that have a similarly low success rate and it easily takes 4 yrs from breeding to tasting, another 4 yrs from first fig to stable fig flavor.  Some of us may not be alive when today's efforts bear fruit. 

So the days of $200 figs are probably numbered.  Let the rewards flow to those who've earned them.  I wish I could contribute.  Maybe the exotic fig hunters can sell subscriptions so we can get in on things early and share the rewards like this guy does.  :)    I'm grateful that quality is rewarded.  In health care and many other businesses it's what you can get away with that's rewarded, a very sad state of affairs.

Good point Bob,
Blind taste testing!
Like the movie Bottle Shock based on the true story where the California wines won the blind taste tests in France over the french wines.

Imagine if someone rates a BT above a MF? MASS HYSTERIA!

Kudzu

The one thing I have learned about collecting ( stamps, coins, figs etc) is that something is only worth what another is willing to pay for it.

Well What Dominick say I learned too:
I also sold 2 Maltese Falcon trees last year and they went for 50 to 75 dollars shipping included,and they were about 1.5 year old.
I am sure that by the time I sell My 2 Maltese in the Fall Other people will sell too,and the price will be much lower.
But I do not care about that because I just do not want to commit to sell them now and risk them arriving dead to destination,and after that have to send another one,and the customer is diss pleased,so I do not take that chance.
I know I am not the perfect packer,and now in the middle of Summer ,it is not easy to make sure the plant arrive safely and alive to customer.
So if the price is higher now,there is a second reason for it outside that the cultivar is superior,to others one can buy in major chain store.

To put all of this into persepective: Gorgi flew to Malta, spent his vacation crawling up rocky terrain looking for figs, collecting and documenting them. Then he had to go to the trouble of getting them back here. Then he and other members had to grow those figs out to see if they required pollination,and pick the best ones. It is several years of work and much cheaper than a plane ticket.

I know Gorgi has been doing really well on eBay, and I hope he can use some of it to go back to Malta so he can find more beauties for all of us, again.

Hoosier, thanks for filling in some of the back-story on this fig!  I didn't realize one of our F4F members was responsible for bring this variety over to the new world.

I am reviving this old thread not because I want to discuss how expensive some varieities are on ebay but to discuss the peculiarities of propagating Maltese Falcon from cuttings.  Herman2 in post 14 noted that it is hard to propagate.  What I am finding is that it roots relatively easily but the rooted cuttings push out really distorted fmv-laden leaves.  After 2-3 leaves are formed the cuttings pretty much just sit this way for weeks.  This is in contrast to several other varieties that I am growing under the same conditions and whose growth has taken off.  I have one MF cutting in conventional cup and two others in SIPs and they are all three stuck in that phase where they could go downhill quickly or could start putting out new growth and be fine.  Has anyone else noticed this?

I'm with Gina.  No need to rush.  No need to bid.  Easy does it.  One day a trade will come, and it will cost you zip. 

I'm ok with the Ebay BUY it NOW, but not with the bidding.  It just gets out of hand.  Really fast.  I know members here do offer cuttings or rooted plants for sale, and before I got smart, I did get sucked into the bidding, but now........  I just chill about it.  Maybe I'm not a collector.  Maybe I just like a good fig? 

Maybe I have acquired the best figs and I don't really need more. 

Suzi

i remember how members used to think that Black Madeira was so hard to root. now anyone can root MB. with time, things change. we learn how to root better and quicker and it's not all that hard to root any cuttings. 

it's rather funny how people will drive up the price on almost anything on the ebay. i used to collect knives. there is a forum just for knives. once people start talking about certain knife, you can be sure there will be ton of that specific knife on the ebay and people will drive up the price when they can just buy it from any dealer for half the price. it's really strange how that works. 

Fertilize it and it will grow better.

Jake, I'm glad you had good luck with MF.  I'll definitely be patient and hope for the best.  My guess is that once it gets past this phase it will be fine.

I've found that Maltese Falcon for me at least has always been easy to root from cuttings. No sign of FMV on my three trees.

Charles