Kessil

2016 Regional Swap feedback

roostertech said:
+1 on being able to police our own forum. One thing that would help boost club liveliness is more social events. It doesn't have to be big/flashy/technical. Tank tour like the one Dick hosted was a perfect social gathering to talk fish. We could do pot luck to lessen the burden on the host.
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This is true, and can be hosted by anybody. That was not a club organized event, neither is Arnold sf tank tours he does in nov every year. You are encouraged to create events any time you'd like!
 
Vincerama2 said:
A slight modification, as I mentioned ... only have ONE card per group. So once someone picks "A", that "A" card goes into the used bucket. (ie, only 10 cards in bucket if it's A-J) This ensures every letter is picked with equal frequency. Then also write down how many times the buckets were swapped, this tells you how many people per group, and from there decide on the time.
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Still doesn't address the matter of too many groups.

Drastically cut the group letters, say A through E, and put in 6 of each. When those 30 are picked, you can put 1 more of each letter back plus 7 of F, then when those run out, put 1 more of each in plus 8 of G. Just keep doing that until you get to some set maximum number of people for any group, it will insure that the number of groups is minimized while having an somewhat equal distribution of numbers per group for all except the last letter perhaps. Only downside is that it does penalize those who show up later a bit (less of a chance of picking a "good" letter, with "good" being very subjective), but like the movie theaters those who show up early (not necessarily late) get the choice of where they want to sit (I hate assigned seating theaters), so throw those people a bone, and very often those who show up early will also be those who help out with the swap.
 
Would anybody feel like assigning your swapping group ahead is a good idea? All who pre register will be assigned a group the day before maybe? People who sign up at the event get groups after all the pre registered people?
 
To be honest, I think it's fair to just have everyone equal. No elite people who pre-registered or showed up early...with the exception of volunteers. It's an even for all member, and the frags are provided by all members. I do agree there were too many groups. Larger groups with less time will make it more efficient.

And although I love it, the Free-For-All needs to be less of a rush for coral grabbing. Not sure how that can be fixed.

Overall though, I think that the general format works, just some tweaks to be more efficient/fun.
 
Getting priority picking (maybe not bonus round priority) for pre-registering might be a good idea to up the preregistration numbers, but I think the raffle tickets are perfectly fine for me. I mean in this frag swap I was not looking to get anything special, I just wanted some easy zoas and what not that I could grow out in an aiptasia-free tank, for down the road, so me having group H was more than adequate for that, I mean I passed over some very choice corals too just to get what seemed like the only ricordia, standard orange too, (and it was mounted on top of that!!!)
 
And yeah the free-for-all left me in a dirty spot, I easily got in, and grabbed a couple of unmarked zoas, and then said out loud hmm maybe I should only take two and not be greedy... then I looked around and saw some people with 4-5 containers... so I took another couple zoas, including Vince's! (which has been a long running tradition for me, usually it's an unmounted ricordia I grab but his died)
 
Vincerama2 said:
To be honest, I think it's fair to just have everyone equal. No elite people who pre-registered or showed up early...with the exception of volunteers. It's an even for all member, and the frags are provided by all members. I do agree there were too many groups. Larger groups with less time will make it more efficient.

And although I love it, the Free-For-All needs to be less of a rush for coral grabbing. Not sure how that can be fixed.

Overall though, I think that the general format works, just some tweaks to be more efficient/fun.
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Pre-registration or showing up early gets you nothing special as far as the swap goes. Did you think there was? The only thing pre-reg got you

The rationale for bonus and ultra frags and rounds is to encourage people to bring their prized corals out to trade. This is horse trading pure and simple. If I bring a stallion to trade, I expect to get something equivalent in value.

So if I bring a $100 frag, I'm hoping others will to. But asking me to put my $100 frag on the table and hope that other frags of equivalent value will be there when its my turn is a hard pill to swallow.

So if, like this swap, I get last group and when I get up there and everything is monti cap and birdsnest, I'm SOL. And guess what, next frag swap I'm not going to bring a $100 frag. I'll bring nice frags but frags that will be a lot more common. Maybe some stylos, monti caps, pink and gold zoas cuz I can guarantee that no one will repeat that twice.

You may think it is unfair to have people who bring ultras/bonus frags get 1st pick. But I'd be willing to bet that a lot of people who didn't bring bonus/ultra frags got at least 1 bonus frag. And everyone one who brought ultra/bonus frags did not go home with all ultra/bonus frags. I, myself, brought 3 ultras and 15 bonus that counted towards my 8 bonus round tickets. I also brought 4 other Sunset Montis that would have counted towards bonus tickets if I took the time to arrange my groups but I figured 8 is plenty. I went home with 1 ultra, 3 bonus and a handful of other nice frags.

As for ultra/bonus frags being small because we try to eek out every single bonus ticket we can get, every ultra or bonus frag I got was more than 1" tall. My frags were also a good size. Some of my red dragons are over 2" tall. But 1" is the going size for pricey frags at stores so I'd say the size is expected.

So put yourself in the shoes of someone who brought $400 worth of frags to the swap, then was told everything goes on the table and everyone gets to pick evenly, was given last group and went home with monti caps, stylos and some brown zoas. Do you think you will bring $400 worth of frags to the swap again?

Also, I think we tried not having bonus rounds before. This was before my time. Anyone know how that went?
 
Vhuang168 said:
Also, I think we tried not having bonus rounds before. This was before my time. Anyone know how that went?
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We had bonus before for "rare" corals, we had bonus before for lots of corals (that didn't turn out too well as everyone who tossed in 10 frags of birdsnest got a ticket), and we had time with no bonus rounds either. How it went is it there were swaps when it went good, and as of recently not so good. It really depends upon the club members involved, there were certain times when members were just generous. It wasn't the mindset that you're bring $400 worth of frags, it's that you have colonies of this and they needed to trim them back, and there are the frags, not everyone who makes frags of expensive corals turned around to sell them to try and get money back either, in fact most of the members I knew did no such thing and we just traded corals. Plus those that brought the prize frags very often had a tank full of good stuff, and very often I saw people take 1 or 2 frags and be done with it because they didn't need anything. However quite a few of those members had tank crashes or just stopped and yeah the generosity seemed to go with them as I believe they were the reason that even people with the mindset of "I'm bringing $400 worth of frags, I better get something real nice in return" participated too, and once they went away, and some economic issues (gas going north of $3/gallon for instance) stopped that many of the "high rollers" from other clubs attending our swaps.

Granted I've only been in hobby since 2003 but I remember when the rare corals were basically the Tyree LE stuff, that was it, then every damn shop owner out there who got a slightly different color morph of an otherwise common coral had to name it and throw LE on it, zoa naming went from "jesus christ" to "you got to be kidding me?" to batshit insane as far as naming goes, and yeah as time goes on there's always going to be slightly different color morphs so christ on a crutch the naming convention will not stop. I remember a time before chalices were even a thing, then again every slightly different pattern became a name, and yeah so went the prices of corals through the roof. Cali tort, Becker tort, Bennet tort, it's all the same shit, it grew all over my tank like a weed, but stores were still selling 2-3" sticks of it for $80+, yet I'd happily bring 5+ frags to any swap without even thinking twice... which FYI I originally got at a swap (although it was donation from a store IIRC, not from a member)

So while I might not agree with what constitutes 'rare', it's mostly because the naming of corals has gotten way too far out of control, I do believe that we need bonus rounds, we need them in a big way. The club needs to get people who are not going to drop $100 on a frag that looks super awesome under blue lights in a shallow frag tank and is smaller than a fingernail to get some of these "rare" corals, the more in the club that get these corals, the more common they become the more we see of them at frag swaps, yes there was a time when I remember anyone who successfully kept SPS corals has a Leng Sy cap, or a Montipora setosa (the orange one that strangely never got named :D), not rare you say? they were. They absolute were, in fact the clubs frag swaps pretty much destroyed most markets for expensive corals in the area whether it was some guy trying to sell his frags at $100 a pop or a store trying to cash in on the "LE" craze, any serious reefer knows they could basically wait for the bi-annual BAR swap and have a good chance of getting something.

It was probably around there that the club stopped doing "rare" picks for bonus rounds, when by definition not much was really rare, there were some corals that were not as widespread, because unlike most "rare" corals today they did grow at a snail's pace (Oregon Tort or Purple Monster come to mind), but the vast majority not rare anymore.
 
Maybe we should add a third swap per year that encourages less expensive corals. Includes gsp, and all the common stuff that people complain about there being too much of it. Maybe I'll make a poll to see if there would be enough interest it that type of thing
 
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