Chalice Coral Popularity?

This is a silly thread I know. But can someone explain to me why chalice corals are so popular nowadays? I mean maybe this is just me but I think they're a relatively boring coral from the pics I've seen. What makes them so appealing?

Maybe someone has a pic of a chalice that has grown out quite a bit instead of a small frag? Why are they so expensive? Are they the next fad like Zoas were awhile back? And acans before that?

Am I just out of the loop?

 

yes thats exactly why

 

I don't have any pictures, but a couple of guys in my local club are really into the chalices. One in particular and I have seen his tank and the frags have grown considerably. The colors and the color combinations are simply stunning!! But I also know they can be really pricey.

sorry, I don't know if that helps you too much, but FWIW if I had the money, I would be doing some chalices......

 

IMO they are so popular because there many really cool colors, which makes them very collectible. That's also a reason why they are so expensive, collectors will pay more and hype various corals to make theirs more valuable. The more hype, the more people want them.

 

+1 Exactly, I got 4 so far planing on getting more ;D

 

I've seen some with amazing colors. Supply and demand. You can't give xenia away in Dallas but a watermelon chalice is still very expensive.

 

The prices on some chalices are what drove me to the following thread:

http://www.3reef.com/forums/coral/coral-prices-question-82678.html

I just don't see it.

M

 

i actually just picked up three ( http://www.3reef.com/forums/coral/lotsa-new-corals-yay-83839.html ). i'd never really understood why they were so freaking expensive (still don't) so i never really looked at them. the only reason i got them was because the price was right. they are pretty colorful but not worth what people are charging for them

 

That's the market at work, demand means supply. People like pretty colors.

Also to go deeper into it, they are very fraggable which means easily tradeable and sellable which means lots of people intend to try and recoup some of the cost or trade for larger collection.
They grow at a decent rate (usually) so even a small frag will come into it's own within a year or two most of the time just like an SPS frag. They are very hardy which means it's not difficult or risky to frag down to sub-dime size.
There are also an almost innumerable number of color variations with lots of pieces having very distinctive colors and patterns so there is a lot of collectability there as well.
Some of the extreme prices are due to them being a recent fad to some extent I would think but they probably will hold their baseline/middle of the road price for a while I would think until the market gets saturated with a large number of desireable chalices so people don't feel the need to spend $200 on a one eye frag because they can get a similar one for $40-50.

Also FWIW you don't need to spend an arm and a leg to get some nice chalices, especially if you have a local reef club there are lots of good deals out there for reasonable prices. Of course some people think a reasonable price is like $10 but I'm not sure that's very realistic for a nice colorful coral with all of the benefits listed above. That all depends on how much disposable income you have for reefing. Reef tanks being relatively expensive in the first place means a good portion of reefers already have a reasonable amount of disposable income to be able to afford corals priced at above bargain basement prices.

My 2c anyway.