| Hi Tonio, your response reminds me of an article I read in the latest edition of Nichirin about a Japanese hobbyist whose Sanke won an equivalent of a kokugyo award at a local show. In that article, he talked about how he came across this Sanke (it was a left-over that no hobbyist wanted but he purchased it because the dealer recommended it and because it wasn't too expensive) and how it developed over the years leading up to the award. The thing that really struck me from this article was how he said he would buy about 10 or 20 tosai each year, and of the 10 or 20, he would only keep about 2 or 3 the following year. He also said that to find a koi of that sanke's caliber is like 1 in a 100 or something like that (sorry, my neurons are not firing on all cylinders today). I gleaned 2 lessons from this article:
1. Quoting Brady Brandwood's article "Now or Laters" of how koi development is like human development, I think that a hobbyist needs to know how to distinguish between the for-now koi and the for-future koi. In order to do this, like what Dick said, one has to follow the breeders and the bloodlines that they use to predict a tosai's development. Otherwise, the hobbyist will be like me as he/she tries to get rid of his tosai as none of them panned out.
2. "1/20" Golden Rule: Like what you and the owner of the Sanke said, if you are lucky, you will get a decent koi out of 20 tosai. If one is to invest in tosai, then he/she has to accept this fact. |