Anyone who has browsed any of the online seed suppliers sites, will have noticed huge differences in prices. For what are effectively the same strain. Take white widow as an example, now you can get ww seeds ranging from cheap prices. For example nirvana. Up to the really expensive. Like the doggies nuts. Now my question has to be. Is it worth paying an absolute fortune for good genetics, or will the cheaper beans give the same end result?

__________________
Its nice to be important, but its more important to be nice.

depends on your $$ situation.

I buy strictly from Attitude. Never a problem and their beans are always great for what I use them for.

Generally no, the $$ isnt worth the difference. For the general grower that cant tell the difference between a few % of CNB or THC than go with the middle of the road guys, Attitude.

I always order from attitude myself too. It had always puzzled me why there was such a difference in pricing from seed to seed for the same strain. I use greenhouse seeds pretty much exclusively, and they def aint expensive, and always seem to get good results. If paying for the most expensive beans, i would expect something which was far superior than the cheaper beans, in the real world that aint gonna happen.

__________________
Its nice to be important, but its more important to be nice.

most of the big seed dealers sell breeders seeds...if the breeder is the same but the price is not then......I guess some peep want to make more $ than others...it prob pays to shop around

__________________
I'm not a Dude

skunk in autopots my 3rd indoor grow

I understand it pays to shop around. But what i am getting at is you can pay 20 quid for 10 beans, which are described as white widow, yet for 10 ww beans from another breeder you could pay 150 quid for 10. The question was, whether the expensive beans would produce better smoke at the end of the day. Or would the 20 quid beans produce as good a smoke.

__________________
Its nice to be important, but its more important to be nice.

In reality they are not essentially the same strain and definitely not "effectively" the same strain. There is no legal protection to a strain name where if a breeder has a hit with it any other breeder cannot then take similar plants but of different genetics and in effect create a new strain that to some degree or another may share in part some similarities with the original strain and then keeping that breeder from marketing it under the same name.
　
It is smart business sense. A breeder has a hit, you know what his basic recipe was so you follow the basics so you can claim the same basic combination but your genetics will be different and you may go about it in a somewhat different route but in the end you have something you can call the same thing as the original.

The original brings, and deserves, a higher price but you sells yours a whole lot cheaper and for all those out there who really want to grow the real deal but just can’t spend that much on genetics they allow themselves to be fooled that they will be getting all that close to the original by purchasing something that is genetically different but in their price range but most importantly carries the same name as what the buyer wants so that validates their choice. It is the strain name they want in their price range so that is all that matters to them.
　
I am not saying that all knockoffs stink or that some are not good values but anyone who buys one for the name and not for what it actually gives them being what they actually want is picking their genetics poorly. When you look at knockoffs you pretty much have to get past the shared name and see if what they give you is what you want and of course if it fits your budget and see it as just being a different strain instead of being the one you want but aren’t buying.
　
In the case of Doggies Nuts I do at least give them credit for calling their version White Widow #1. That at least denotes some difference or change, though to many it will imply an advancement when that in fact may or may not be the case, but at least they basically said this is supposed to be different, this is actually ours instead of using just the name and like so many breeders of White Widow do, use the very same advertising copy about the original White Widow about how it became so famous and popular in the coffee houses ..etc … you read the same copy under most breeders knockoff White Widow and that is misleading because that implies to people that it is the real deal instead of a knockoff.
　
But that explains the difference in price. The original deserves it, the rest don’t but depending on how much they think they can get for their version they will price it accordingly and hope the famous name alone carries sales on and on and that they do not have to rely on their own genetic dabbling to secure their financial future.

When it comes to purchasing good genetics and if it is worth it depends on two things really, if someone can actually get enough out of the genetics with their system to justify the expense and then the main one that trumps all else is if someone perceives it to be a value.
　
If you give the very best genetics in the world to an inexperienced grower with a less than adequate setup unless they just plain kill it off or totally butcher it they will likely end up with some amount of something that is pretty good. If it lives to harvest its genetics will still at least keep it pretty good … but in the hands of a very experienced grower with an optimal setup the difference between the two results could be astounding.
　
In that case you can not weaken or lessen quality genetics but you can get less out of great genetics that are there to be had due to various factors that could come into play but you still have the cushion of great genetics backing you up.
　
Now give that same ultra-experienced grower with an optimal setup some Roadside Red beans to grow and the very most he will end up with is the best example of Roadside Red that could be found. It will be genetically limited so no matter what could be done nothing will take it beyond its genetic limits. They can be totally maxed out to absolute perfection but they cannot be taken beyond that.
　
Good genetics are the key to any final outcome. They will not guarantee great but they guarantee you a chance at great but when dealing with poor genetics … well you can’t make chicken salad out of chicken shit no matter how much mayonnaise you use.

__________________
Do you know what "nemesis" means? A righteous infliction of retribution manifested by an appropriate agent. Personified in this case by an 'orrible cunt... me.

so how do you tell who is the orignator of what strain.not strictly by price?high price would give the percption of quality,but does it make it so?which beckons back to my original question,WHOS IS WHAT?

__________________
SweetyBoy

If you have every been in business you would not be so quick to assume that just because someone has a higher price for the same product that they just want to make more money and make it faster.

So many different things can factor into the pricing of something where there can be cases where a business that sells an item for the lowest price that can be found can earn more profit off each individual sale of that item than a place that has the exact same item for the very highest price.
　
Without any real knowledge of how the entire production/wholesaling/retail system is setup and knowing the workings and differences between the various seedbanks it would be impossible to judge if anyone is actually overpricing anything based on what they themselves have to pay for their goods and then all operating costs added and then be able to see if there appears to be an unduly high markup or not.
　
My personal opinion …. almost genetics are overpriced.

Look at how few true standout strains there have been over say maybe the last decade or decade and a half, and that is like breeder release dates and not when the strain may have been originated in California or Indiana a decade or two earlier than it made its way to Holland.

Sure every year there are cup winners but every year there are Academy Award winners too but that doesn’t mean each year films get better or that this years winner really is better than "Gone With The Wind."
　
I understand that operating costs do go up so there will always be some slow continual price increasing but it seems like for about the last decade or a little more that the pricing increase has more than outpaced the quality increases, both in number of standout strains and overall quality offered to the public.
　
I see what I call warning track fly outs being marketed as being homeruns.

To me many start out to look like they will make it out of the park, they have the height and it looks like they may have the range and people start to stand up to cheer and then while pressed up against the outfield fence the outfielder reaches up and easily grabs it and it turned out all the excitement was for nothing.

I see stuff that would half accurately describe that will be touted as fantastic and the latest and greatest when after you pause a moment and compare them to the zillion other strains out there that are very similar in any number of ways you realize that it is just another brick in the wall and the one being touted as being the latest and the greatest is really only another long fly out. But it is still priced like a homerun.
　
Buyers/growers have been sold this bill of goods saying that things just keep getting better and better and with it the prices creep up and up and what used to be very high dollar prices are now just sort of expensive beans and what used to be upper-average priced beans are now the least expensive you can find … and guess what … most aren’t better today and some aren’t as good as some still existing older strains and a number of strains that were discontinued due to lack of sales that was caused not by a lack of quality but instead a lack of popularity.
　
But as long as buyers continue to willingly pay more and more breeders and seedbanks will gleefully ask for more and more.
　
As a wise man once said; "You can't cheat an honest man. Never give a sucker an even break or smarten up a chump."

__________________
Do you know what "nemesis" means? A righteous infliction of retribution manifested by an appropriate agent. Personified in this case by an 'orrible cunt... me.

You can research strains and especially in the case of cup winners normally it is not all that hard to find out what an original was and whose it was.
　
Things do get confusing of you do not follow the bouncing ball like when Shantibaba sold out his portion of Green House Seeds and left with his genetics, including the original White Widow and the original White Rhino, and opened up Mr. Nice Seeds (all along with other people involved in each step of course) and he renamed the original White Widow Black Widow and the original White Rhino Medicine Man.

Well there was then a flood of White Widow and for a while White Rhino knockoffs but if someone follows the bouncing ball and or researches it isn’t hard to do.

There are many sites on the Internet to reference about marijuana other than RIU or other sites that are basically the same.
　
One of the best places to look first is SeedFinder http://en.seedfinder.eu/ It has 1,764 varieties of strains made by 111 different breeders.

In a good number of each strain you can find its lineage and you can see what it was made from and then looking at something else you may see it has a shared parent or something that would then make it appealing to you when it otherwise might not have been.
　
I do chuckle at times when I read things written by people who in at least some cases seem to have at least a fairly sound amount of knowledge about growing but at the same time do not seem to know much if anything about strains and breeders and originals and knockoffs, but they sure do have their all time favorites (even if they do not know if they grew the original or not) and most all of them know the name of the current flavor of the month strain.

__________________
Do you know what "nemesis" means? A righteous infliction of retribution manifested by an appropriate agent. Personified in this case by an 'orrible cunt... me.

By and large, I think whatever is popular at the moment, tends to cost more than whatever isn't. Otherwise, you'll just have to reasearch your favorite strain to find who really does have the original and/or good genetics for it.

__________________
" I grow vegetables-if anyone (including me) says otherwise they are lying."
GHS Trainwreck http://www.rollitup.org/grow-journal...rainwreck.html
GHS White Grow http://www.rollitup.org/grow-journal...hite-grow.html