"Now if there is bidding, I would imagine the price has to start fairly low, or the bidding will go wild....I"ve seen spacecoast seashells online for $32, without an auction. I would imagine the price with bidding will get higher than that." Not necessarily. What you're forgetting is that an auction is merely a market, so market forces - supply & demand - together create a price, just as they typically do in any non-monopoly/monopsony market. So, cultivars that are readily available and/or older and/or have been acquired already by many people usually will end up at the "market" price, ie, the average price on the open market. There's no reason that, in general, people would pay more on the open market than in the auction. And there's no reason that, in general, people would pay more on the auction than in the open market. Obviously, there are exceptions, and the auction price is higher than would seem logical, for a variety of reasons. For example (1) the daylily is rare, hard to come by, exceedingly desirable; (2) a seller is known to be particularly good and generous with the quality of the auction plant and/or quality of gift plants; (3) two or more bidders are determined to win a particular auction, regardless of how new or old, expensive or inexpensive, easy to come by or hard to come by a daylily is. This happens quite often IMO. In the latter case, my advice is watch many auctions. You'll find out VERY quickly who these bidders are. Frankly, I think they're nuts, but perhaps winning is merely a game to them. THE GAME, in fact. In these cases, I don't participate. What's the point? The daylily will reappear on the auction one day, maybe even within a week or two, and I'll buy it at or near the market price. In terms of what price a seller starts bidding on his/her plants -- if you watch auctions, you'll see that there are sellers who start the price at or near the open market price. There are quite a few sellers, however, who start their prices, FOR THE SAME CULTIVAR, very low, say, $1.00 or $2.00 or $5.00 for a daylily with a market value of, say, $20 or $40 or even $150. What happens with those low-priced "bargain" daylilies? Assuming the sellers have good reputations (or, perhaps more precisely, do not have bad reputations), the bidding that starts at $1.00 will end up pretty much at the same price as the bidding for daylilies initially started near the market price.

Folks....This is getting a bit of hand. One has to think if some people have nothing better to do than to make mountains out of molehills. Some of you who responded, have clearly not even read my post. If you don't read, please don't make a reply to it. In fact, I never stated that I consulted an attorney. I just said that an attorney has been consulted. And I wanted to point out that if you damage a person's livlihood as a result of unsubstantiated slander, you can be held accountable. Be careful what you say. This is not a threat of lawsuit, just some good advice. It is easy to state your 'experience' here with no facts to verify that what you say is true. Had you complained to us we would have the facts of what the item was and what was said in the description, etc. Any negative comments made here, without facts to back it up, is just worthless prattle. If you have a complaint, do something substantial and use our feedback protocol. I will explain this later. Let me say it once again: No one has the right to stifle the FACTS. That is never the intention in any of my posts. It is the damaging assumptions and implications that have been made that have INDEED damaged Marvin....implications and even statements MADE PUBLICALLY, that he was deliberatly trying to rip people off...WHICH IS CLEARLY NOT THE CASE. There was a lack of communication to his buyers, yes, and a couple of mistakes. This is very different than what some were saying. Most of this misunderstanding and mis-information can be avoided if people would simply follow the Lily Auction Feedback protocol: 1) Contact the seller first if you have a dispute. 2) If no response or inadequate response given by seller, then do contact us. 3)If you are not happy with the result of the above 2, then leave FACTUAL negative feedback. And know that if a seller is proven to be abusive or negligent in fulfilling orders, they will be suspended from the Lily Auction. This feedback system is already in place and works just fine if people would use it as it was meant to be used. Steve, thanks for your comments and sanity. I understand your "head scratching" though. Here is how I understand the legalities, in layman's language: Emotional, defamatory or judgmental feedback can be considered libelous. Comments like: 'Seller sent bad plants & 'ignored' my emails" is different from saying 'I was not happy with plants and got no reply from my many emails' which is factual. Comments like, 'this seller is a crook and is deliberately ignoring me' is clearly libelous. If you have any doubt about what is libelous, then you should ask attorney. If your comments are factual, you do not have to worry. Also, a seller may never respond negatively to a buyer unless the buyer does not pay or is verbally abusive. Moreover, retaliatory feedback is NOT allowed. So buyers should feel free to leave honest and factual feedback without fear of retaliation. Please folks, if you still feel that the Lily Auction is a good place to shop then please use our feedback system as it was meant to be used. Looks like a couple of you don't like it. That is your prerogative. But don't blame anyone but yourself for not using the feedback system if you did not report a bad experience. One person stated that 'Daylily people' are not 'nice' people. Boy, if anything is the exact opposite of the truth, this statement was. Generally, daylily people are wonderful. I have met some of the nicest people in the world through daylilies....through the Lily Auction, other venues, and conventions. There are definitely exceptions though, as with anything else. I can tell you with absolute confidence, that it it only 1/10th of 1% that are problems. Certainly fraud of any kind must be exposed and not tolerated. But this was not a case of fraud. Marvin must reconcile his mistakes, and he is doing just that, and he must also take responsibility for his lack of communication. My experience with him is that he is a humble man, overwhelmed with orders this spring, and on the verge of tears to me on the phone about this whole incident. I see no reason why we cannot both hold him responsible, which he clearly does himself, as well as treat him with kindness. I don't see this as a matter of either/or. Truth with compassion, has always been the high road for me. Sincerely, Mike Longo

Yes, you can get interesting blooms, but lets put it this way.. I have about 1k seedlings, I have exactly one worthy of introduction, a few thats close, and hundreds that are either not better then the parents , or are redundant. Ive spent 600 dollars in one year on crosses, and its just a crapshoot.. However, some of the best crosses, came from some that were not just 2012 cover daylilies, its hard not to purchase those, but over time, you start looking for certain other charastics, bud count, vigor, growth zone, dormants vs sev, vs eve, emo's ect.. I am now using some of those best plants as my base stock, in a few years I will be culling hundreds of my seedlings and taking my base stock and going foward again. BTW, dont trust everything you see on there, I can tell you right now, the only two poeple I would buy from is Ladylovingdove, becuase she actually owns those plants shes posting and RICH from ctdaylily.. he is by far one of the best and honest sellers on the LA auction, with high germination, he knows how to cull seeds, and he just doesnt offer the "newest" he uses repeats, becuase those are the ones , he knows does well. (the later you get into the season, the more people I know I can trust gets on) This is my one daylily I would feel confident to release, it has hieght , vigor, colour and performance, its a large face, with the biggest measuring 8.5, but generally never gets below 7 inches. A sib to it, is even more vigorous, probably one of the most vigorous plants Ive ever seen here. I have alot of interesting fun crosses, but alas, its really not easy, hence the cost of the big boys, they do thousands of crosses, to get down to a dozen or so a year (some do 20k crosses!) I have all sorts of fancy looking stuff, chicken fat, double edges, pie crusting ect, but the more of these you get, the harder it is to get something great out of it. silverkelt

Nikki, Glad to hear you kitty is not suffering ill effects from the dl. Hope he gets through his surgeries OK. Virgo45, Thanks for posting again. It's hard to tell w/my monitor but those last too look like near-whites. I would not have imagined that from their parents other than just that you are working in the pastel range which I'd suspect near whites being more common there than say in a darker red/purple range. Mark, good luck with your auctions. I've noticed that traffic seems slower on the auctions after 1/1. I've seen a couple other posts here that a few people are trying to lay-off the auction frenzy until spring. At least one seller has told me she does not plan to offer more auctions this year. Maybe someone who has been around the auctions longer could enlighten us if that's an annual pattern. It certainly means that the bidding wars are less frequent so maybe there's a chance to get what you want at the basement prices?