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The right sanke is the right sanke- no doubt. And fads do come and go. But in truth, the ideal sanke never changes.
The ideal pattern of sanke was probably realized in 1989. The skin was there by 1992. But then there was a reach back in the genetic pool of collector type fish for bone and size. This unraveled the pattern and design for several years now and we consumers, ones without $40,000 to spend on a fish, must settle for high class culls for the time being. Don't get me wrong- you can really appreciate many elements on these castoff fish! But if you want the size along with the color quality and most of all - pattern, you need to pay up- bigtime.
One point, of many, that the US and British consumer/koi buyer does not understand and one that brokers have a field day with, is that aka sanke is considered by most advanced Japanese hobbyists and professionals a lower class pattern and not a very valuable fish. The pattern weights down the fish and removes all sense of refinement. Yet, there are some really beautiful Aka sanke cast offs coming out of the effort to produce a monster size sanke. The simple reason for this is magoi and large moyo patterns are close the wild type and bring wonderful size, sumi and luster. But they are primative patterns and bring us back to unrefined patterns of the 160s- 1970s. So the breeders are now working through this and will take years to get back to the Dainichi or torazo sanke pattern of 1990.
In otherwords, we now have better skin, better sumi, better beni, better size but have ,for the time being, created large numbers of collector type fish that are amazing but at the same time, disappointing.
JR
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