Whats A Japanese Black Pine Worth? Looking To Buy Need Advice

Brent

Dustin

I have only a little time at the moment, so I want to return to this thread later. But a few things I would like to say. John's comments above are right on target. If the tree is in a bonsai pot and it doesn't have a finished trunk there is a 90% chance you are being taken to the cleaners. You can be sure you will be paying an ultrapremium price for a cheap chinese pot and about an hour's labor to get it potted up. This is counterproductive to the development of the tree, and it shows that the seller A) doesn't know beans about pines or B) he has put it in a bonsai pot for a quick buck.

The standard practice of evaluating bonsai works for pines. First look at the nebari, if it's butt ugly on a nearly mature tree, it will never be a good tree. If it has a good nebari, it almost doesn't matter what the rest of the tree looks like as long as it is young enough for a complete restyling. Next look at the trunk. If you are buying a mature tree, it should have buttress and taper if a formal or informal upright. If it has movement and taper, it will be dramatically more valuable. Branching is last, but must be present because of the difficulty in getting pines to back bud. Branching doesn't have to be anywhere near complete, but must be present. In fact, it is usually better if branching is not extensive on a tree in development because larger branches will usually end up too thick by the time the trunk is complete.

I will address values later, but since I am in the biz of growing these, not importing them, I can give you some rough guidelines. Young trees with proper training, not styling, trunks not completed, but low branching induced, should cost you $25 to $100 for one gallon to five gallon trees. I charge $50 for 2 gallon trees that are about seven years old. This may be what you want, but don't expect bonsai looking trees like the ones already posted. The trees pictured above are immature trees forced into pots too early thereby pretty much sacrificing and serious future development. Good trees are in pots until the trunks are finished, usually ten to forty years. Ten years will give you a decent shohin trunk (from seedling stage).

If you want good pines that have nearly finished trunks and final branching present, you are looking at $200 up, and these still won't be in bonsai pots. A 'nice' (not spectacular) tree by my standards that will be finished in five to ten years is worth $500 to $1000, and that's really cheap compared to what I have to do to create such a tree.

Brent

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spoonman

i got one about 45cm tall and the trunk was about 3.5cm. it was $90 aus.

__________________
"Little laurel trees, your roots can find
No mountain, yet your leaves extend
Beyond your own world into mine
Perennial wands, unfolding in my thought
The budding evergreen of time."
-Kathleen Raine, The Trees in Tubs

joakimlinden

I have absolutely no experience with bonsai prices or even the long process of developing them - actually, I've only recently begun to dive into the bonsai art/science.

But... I've been thinking...

A few 100 dollars for a tree that is several years old and involves a high amount of special knowledge, special tools, special soil, storage and pots seems very little.
Imagine what an artist gets for painting a portrait of someone in oil... I'm guessing 1000's of dollars, even if it's a semi-skilled/experienced artist.

It's impossible to compare artforms but there are not many professional portait painters or bonsai artists out there... It's hard to aquire the skills to perfect both artforms, it will probably take a lifetime. All this has probably been gained at a high cost for the respective artists - in time and money. So I feel that Brent's estimates are very resonable...

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Best regards, Joakim

Chip Smith

It's kind of like the old story that a friend told me (claimed it was his uncle) ... An engineer goes to fix a large generator and does so by whacking it with a sledge hammer. He sends the company a bill for $1,000 and they ask him to itemize his invoice. The invoice has two line items. "Hitting the generator with sledgehammer .... $1 "Knowing exactly how and when to hit the generator ... $999"
I can buy decent little JBP's at Home Depot in the spring for about $6. To get them looking fat and old like in those pictures takes "Knowing exactly how" to candle-prune etc. AND a several years of consistent care. You're paying for experienced care and time. If you're like me ... you want to gain that experience firsthand !

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Chip Smith
Nashville's Second-best Jazz Whistler

Brent

Dustin

A few more thoughts on the subject.

The advice of the experience should be well taken. I have been playing with pines for twenty years now. I am sure it can be done faster with the right teachers, but simply by reading and teaching myself, practicing on hundreds of plants, etc, it has taken me this long to proceed with confidence. Even at this point, I have to tell you that I haven't really paid much attention to the final ramification, needle plucking etc, because none of my pines are at this stage yet. It's an awfully long road to start with one gallon material, even five years longer with seedling material.

On the other hand, for me anyhow, the joy was in the learning and the discovery. It's hard to put a value on that kind of experience. Currently, I figure my best work, that is, work that demands that I use that 20 years of experience at $100 an hour. This is professional work, even if it isn't recognized as such. It takes just as much learning and experience as say a good attorney, even though there isn't a lot of fancy gold trimmed paper hanging on the wall. Do I get rich by valuing my work at $100 an hour? No, you practically have to take an vow of poverty in this business. There are just too few opportunities to get paid what the work is worth. I hope that is changing. I made a decision years ago to charge what the material is worth, not what the market will fetch. The nice thing is that the material doesn't degrade if it doesn't sell, it just gets more valuable. You can pass up a buy now, but if you come back in a year, it will be at least $100 more.

Having said this, I will clue you in on where to get outstanding material 'cheap'- at club shows. Nowhere can you find such advanced trees for so little money, unless it is at a bonsai nursery going out of business, and maybe not even then. Of course you have to be able to separate the gems from the rhinestones, not all club material is gem quality. A friend of mine managed to buy a beautiful Nishiki black pine _airlayer_, completely finished with a two inch caliper trunk for $200 at the REBS show sale. That was a steal. Almost every club show will one or two deals almost that good. That tree was worth well over a thousand dollars.

Most customers are clearly shocked when I tell what my trees worth. The just gulp and move on. That's ok, I understand the feeling. I get the same feeling when I price thermal transfer labeling machines. But what really gets my goat is when an errant customer (and this really does happen) will challenge me that my trees can't possibly be worth that much because they can get blah, blah, blah, at x,x,x. Sure, everyone can find a bargain now and again, but does that mean I have to price my trees lower than than the lowest conceivable price you have ever seen? Some people actually have the temerity to argue this with me. I usually just give them directions to the nearest Wal-Mart, and thank them for coming.

Also, don't get caught up with the either or arguments. You can, and should, do both, buy some advanced material so you can have something to do right away, and also start a collection of starter stock for the future. You will get very bored with one tree, and your learning experiences will be unduly limited.

Brent

PS: My black pine specimen material isn't for sale yet, so don't ask. Come back in a year or two.

FredL

Brent, it is really a delight to have you weigh in on this subject. I've been to your web site and learned alot from it. Wish I was still in California so I could come over to visit you. Your generosity in sharing alot of what you've learned from your website is most commendable to my way of thinking.

I am curious regarding some of your comments, as well as what I've read between the lines. I wonder whether you feel that certain critical development of JBPs must take place early in their life-cycle or the opportunity is lost forever. Or, do you think it's possible to, for example, develop a good base or trunk at any point in a tree's life IF one is willing to apply the proper techniques and take the time (several years) to do it. Also, in my Bonsai Bible, "Bonsai Today", many articles are devoted to developing some pretty remarkable trees from pretty mediocre, even superficially hopeless material. Do you think this is exceptional or that many excellent treees are lurking in such disguise and merely awaiting the right artist to reveal them?

Once again, thank you so much for your comments. Bonsai pricing is such an interesting, even important subject in our community. It's really great to have somebody with some actual knowlege of the subject comment on it. I, for one, have learned alot from what you've had to say.

Fred

Brent

"I wonder whether you feel that certain critical development of JBPs must take place early in their life-cycle or the opportunity is lost forever. Or, do you think it's possible to, for example, develop a good base or trunk at any point in a tree's life IF one is willing to apply the proper techniques..."

Fred

Interesting question. It just so happens that my most developed trees are actually rescued one gallon stock. These were trees that were supposed to be field planted and raised for bonsai. It's a long story, but the upshot is that it never happened. They never got planted, most died, but a hundred or so grew into lanky three and four foot junk trees rooted into the ground through the pots. I was about to throw them away, but then I thought what the hell, I'll give them a chance.

That was about ten or twelve years ago. I sold a few, some died later, but I still have about 25 of them. A few are STILL junk, but most are nice and a few are stunners. I learned a lot from those 100 trees. It was more difficult than starting with seedlings or good one gallon stock, because I literally had to invent rescue techniques.

The most difficult part was getting them hammered back so I could regenerate more low growth, which was almost completely missing. Since these trees were still only about five years old at the time, I did manage to do this. Many of the techniques are in the Pine articles at my website.

To answer your question specifically, the age or treatment does not matter as long as the tree has a trunk young enough to still break buds down low OR at least one low branch
capable of being a new leader AND this leader has the ability to break buds to get the first two final branches in the right place. Of course, the older the tree is, the more limited your choices for design. For example, if the lowest branch that could be the new leader is a foot off the ground, and you can get a first final branch near the junction (the first whorl on the branch), then the pine would have to be around 3 feet tall for a traditional tree (first branch 1/3 up the trunk). That's a pretty hefty pine.

Pines don't really 'go bad' on you until you get a nearly completed trunk. At this stage if you let the final branching go to hell and don't ramify it continually, you can literally ruin the tree in a year or two. The final branching will get too thick, and even if you can hammer it all the way back to the trunk, it will never be the same. Before trunk completion, if you have done your job right, you have left multiple design possibilities so that you can change your mind if a better design dawns on you or you lose a branch, or the apex, etc. For example, I just heavy pruned my 25 good pines. One of them was just a dog, straight stovepipe trunk, no hope of getting branching in a long low section, etc. But I did have a very low sacrifice at about 2 inches high. Well the 'tree' became the sacrifice and the sacrifice became the new tree. Now I have a pretty nice start with a great low sharp bend and taper. It's on its way to becoming a respectable informal upright. But, understand, I just threw away ten years of work. It's now on the brush pile. That's why these things are so valuable. To get a moving trunk, you don't wire it, you get there by chopping back to a low branch, not once but several times, removing four, five or more years of growth usually. So for every curve in the trunk, there is literally another tree that has been thrown away.

A good tree in training will have not just one design possibility, but many. Each branch carries the potential of becoming the new trunk line. I even maintain the short low branches that grow on the lowest sacrifice branches just in case I have to use the sacrifce as the trunk, as I did above. These techniques are complex and esoteric, they aren't things you usually learn in workshops, but they are the heart of good material.

Brent

PS: How many times have you seen bonsai nursery stock pines or eBay pines with sacrifice branches? That should tell you something.

Delboy

Hi Dustin, Not sure if someone has mentioned this already but there is a import ban on black pines in the UK. Don't know about other countries, but this does make them a bit rarer than other pine species and obviously more expensive.
Also it is right what John says. The small fat JBP's that you refer to have probably had a lot more carried out on them than the larger ones. Making them more expensive, although this doesn't always reflect in price comparisons.

Regards
Delboy.

David Yedwab

Brent's comments are the truth and his advice about buying a mature piece or two and growing more is wonderful. I have bought several of Brent's 1-2-3 gallon seedlings and have learned lots. But, still probably 10 years or more away from anything considered a bonsai. Happyily, I have also acquired a few mature trees and worked to be close to show-ready and acquired one magnificent mature JBP. Having the pleasure of working on all the different stages is great. And, once again, Brent's guidance is worth much in both knowledge and your bonsai pleasure.

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David Yedwab