EBAY - A Recent Experience

matsu

I see the ebay "Auction Bashing" thread is active again so I thought I'd start a new thread and post a recent ebay experience. A positive one no less. So get the flame throwers warmed up y'all. Here goes. I've been searching for a very large unstyled Dwarf Yaupon Holly (Ilex Vomitoria 'nana') for over 4 years to create a live oak style tree. I've search high and low for something to either collect or purchase, to absolutely no avail. I wasn't looking for just any tree, I wanted a thick trunk with good branching and radial roots. I also wanted untrained stock, not a finished tree. Believe it or not, I found it on ebay from Guy Guidry's Bonsi Northshore near New Orleans. I received the tree today and am VERY pleased with it. Its exactly what I've been looking for. I'm attempting to attach a link to the auction. OK, let it rip! You won't hurt my feelings because, as I said, I'm very happy with the deal. Regards, Paul

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dl...gory=20524&rd=1

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Adam

That is a monster tree. Good luck with the styling, can you post a pic when u get the tree?

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mkonig

Nice one.

Seems there are at least some worthy trees on e-bay if you look long enough.

keep us posted on progress

Mike

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matsu

Adam: I'll try to take a picture and post it this weekend. For scale, the pot the tree is in is 16.5" wide. Also, now that I see the tree, I think the top picture in the auction perhaps should be the front, but we'll see.

Mike: There is a awfully lot of garbage, but occasionally something of interest.

Bart Thomas(deceased)

I find that it really pays to set up a fairly detailed search fo bonsai on eBay. I use bonsai -seed -seeds -gem -suiseki -monkey
-beanie.

I then set the search to sort by price (High to Low) and save the search in My eBay.

After 2-3 pages, I'm done.

DavidN

That is actually quite a nice tree.

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TreeBay

I saw the title for that auction come up on our forum homepage, and I followed it because of the "hunky" title - I'm always looking for fodder for the ebay bashing thread. Lo and behold, it was hunky!

Matsu, It's better than nice. I saw that one last week and if my wife wouldn't kill me, I would have put in a bid on that. My finger twitched on the button.


Excellent.

Now be sure to style it like an American oak and don't let anyone suggest you screw it up in one of the usual bonsai ways.

I don't know if you're out here in California or over in Florida, but if you're on the west coast, be sure to hook up with John Thompson, the resident oak expert. He did a presentation at GSBF recently and has had a couple of oaks in the JAL.

Of course I realize this tree's genetics say olive, but it screams OAK! OAK! OAK!

Congratulations,

Matt

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matsu

Thanks Matt. Sorry you didn't bid. Well, not really as I'd have had to go higher. I've been looking for a piece of material like this forever. I haven't told my wife yet, maybe I can sneak it onto my benches and she won't notice. If she does, my standard reply will be used: "Oh, I've had that forever. I can't believe you didn't notice it before now. You really must get outside more honey." Unfortunately, she's heard it before so she'll likely just smile at me and walk away. I can always hope.

I bought the tree to creat a bonsai in the "Live Oak Style." I live on the Texas Gulf Coast and have been admiring our ancient live oaks for years, some of which are masive and hundreds of years old. The tree will be very informal and nontraditional, at least in the classical bonsai sense. Kind of a broom style but not anywhere near as formal. Low undulating branches, much wider than tall, and with a more open interior.

I'll have to look on the JAL site for John's trees. There don't seem to be many trees in this style pictured anywhere. Regards, Paul

TreeBay

Unfortunately they only post the top 2 or three trees on the JAL site. I don't know if it was different this year. We do have one of John's trees in the gallery here, though:

http://pictures.bonsaitalk.com/showphoto.php?photo=1087

It's a fairly young cork oak. Some of the things John does is after wiring small twigs, wrap that branch around a chopstick to get a corkscrew in it. The terminals don't matter so much as it will be cut back to the first turn and a half or so later.

A whole lot of clip and grow is involved. Normally you point the terminal bud in the direction you want the tree to grow, and with most plants that is toward the outside of the plant. With an oak, however, to get that gnarly twisting, you sometimes need to direct the growth in the opposite direction from what's immediately logical.

I wish I had seen the presentation John did on landscape and bonsai oaks at the GSBF convention. Maybe Al or someone else caught it? I saw just a couple of slides when John came by to borrow my projector, but it looked interesting.

I found this book Oaks of California that's full of interesting pictures of oaks in their native habitat.



It's inexpensive in paperback, new about $23. But some guy has a $108 price tag on a hardback first printing that originally sold for $29.95! That seems extreme for a modern title. It's a good thing I collect information and not books per se.

I have a couple of Q. agrifolia, Cork oak (Q. suber), a Red oak, and a little Yaupon holly that is on its way to being an oak of sorts.

Regards,

Matt

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