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On my last trip to Japan I made a point of asking several breeders like Toshio Sakai, Maruyama, and Sakuma to show me examples of the best skin types of their koi regardless of other merits such as body shape, color, pattern, etc.
One thing became very evident. Great skin quality = great Hi & Shiro color quality! Likewise it is very rare and expensive to find great skin/color on a great body. Even more rare and much more expensive to find everything in place including sumi and overall great pattern.
I took a fair amount of photos but frankly I was unhappy with my photos showing the dramatic difference between great skin and average skin. For some reason it seems to take the human eye to see these things clearly.
Descriptions comparing great skin to silk vs cotton or whatever description used does not really convey the needed understanding. As worn out as the old prase is - You have to see a lot of great koi with your own eyes to begin to understand. We just do not have that many great koi in any real concentration in the U.S.
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