I think getting "burned" (not really) way back early on has helped save me from spending too much money on any one piece of livestock. Way back when there was a local show, I want to say it was BAYMAC, I bought a coral from a vendor that looked fantastic, green, blue, purple, and it was a super thick acropora (not a thin tenuis type), and here's the kicker the vendor didn't try to give it a fancy name that literally every vendor does these days just told me "I think it's an acropora abh..." (can't recall the name), anyways, I paid $70 for that frag, that was the most I spent on a frag ever, even minicolonies I've bought never cost that much (kind of shows how much inflation has crushed it), and while I had a tank full of perfectly colorful acroporas I've gotten from various club members via swaps, this coral very quickly lost color and went brown, it stayed alive mind you, it just all the color that made me want to spend the money was gone. I'm not blaming the vendor or anything like that, it was just a rather large expense that backfired, and after that I stayed away from anything expensive on the livestock side of things. While I have paid more for coral, as a bulk purchase, never for any single item, I almost spent $90 on a Naoko wrasse back when that shop in SF existed (forget the name, it was too pretty to survive in the city), but it was mislabelled and actually was $220 and I kindly declined.
