The story of "The Home Game" - TL;DR
06-22-2017
, 12:16 AM
I can't believe it's been 2 weeks and I haven't finished a new chapter. I have been watching WSOP final tables, driving back and forth 150 miles round trip, and the plant biz has been hopping. Today I procured a contract on the sale of a collector's garden - I get a small commission but most of the money is made transporting and consulting on their relocation. This is one of the nicest private gardens in Florida and my bonus for the day was getting to joyride both of the vehicles pictured. The GTI is pushing 380HP to the wheels and @25psi of boost according to the gauge, and the vehicle in back is even faster. Any car nuts out there want to try and guess?
06-27-2017
, 10:20 PM
I have been caught up with this sudden insane amount of work, probably the biggest consult job I have ever undertaken. I have been working with Ken doing a full on catalog of plants from a 40 year old collection from one of the nicest private gardens in Florida as far as rarity goes. The plants in this collection are sort of the blood diamonds of the plant world in Africa, I actually could write a whole other story about these plants, but this is a poker forum. My client is important enough to have his own Wikipedia page, but is really cool and easy to work with, unlike other clients in the past who have had insane net worths. If you guys want to see some pictures of the work and the plants, I can actually put some of them up on here. I couldn't put them up on a plant forum because of the whole secrecy of this plant community, so getting the opportunity to show people would be pretty cool.
In the meantime, I have half a flashback written up, and hope I can get it done the next time I have a few hours free. I will say I have been watching all the final table live streams lately and th 3k PLO is about to go off!
In the meantime, I have half a flashback written up, and hope I can get it done the next time I have a few hours free. I will say I have been watching all the final table live streams lately and th 3k PLO is about to go off!
07-02-2017
, 10:25 AM
What Have I Been Doing?
So as luck would have it, my computer restarted 3/4 the way through my last writeup - all was lost, F!CK! It was a flashback, but still its so annoying. I went to go look at computers today but there's so few middle of the road computers, anyone know where the BEST place is to get a deal on a computer is?
Per request, I'm going to do a little writeup on current work. As I mentioned before, I work in the plant industry. My love for plants, like for many of us and poker, can often be irrational and often lead to bad financial decisions. Where I make the most money in plants is brokering big, rare plants from collector's gardens to other collectors, chopping them up like bricks of weed like Nancy Botwin in Weeds and rerooting them for resale at a hefty profit. I was lucky to have a couple of very good mentors in the palm and cycad world, especially Crazy Eddie. Did I mention Crazy Eddie in my stories? He was the Phil Ivey of cycads, but a complete sociopath. Here is an example of one of the sales I did, just yesterday. This plant is called Encephalartos dyerianus, a cycad from the Transvaal in South Africa. I bought this plant for $500 out of my friend's yard and resold it literally the same day for $2500. There are probably only 10 or 15 of this species this size in the US, so when you have a plant that size, you can ask a premium. The guy even asked if he could dig it himself because he wanted to be extra careful - **** its 93 degrees out and you want to do my digging? Here's the shovel.
About 20% of my plant work is in the seeds and seedling business. I will acquire rare seeds and either flip them to growers around the world, or germinate them and the value of a seedling is often 5-10x what a seed is. I will also grow more common palms en masse to sell to field growers who just dig a hole in the ground and plant a tree. Getting seed from around the world requires patience, and often keeping a schedule with another part of the world in order to be in contact with them during their working hours. There is a huge boom of plant collectors in Thailand and Indonesia, so 7-8pm to 5am can often be a workday for me, much like poker. A few days ago, a friend of mine went to Cuba and sent me a photo of a palm I had never seen before, which is rare. Cuba is a hotbed of plant evolution because of its relative isolation and size as an island, and it is hard to get seeds out of the country, you have to bribe the government, then send them to Jamaica or the DR, and finally ship them to the US legally. Then again, when you find a palm that naturally looks like a pinwheel that someone spun and threw coke all over it, sometimes it's worth it.
When I say I do the brokering part, basically I locate mature plants for sale in gardens, and match them to my buyers. Plant collectors are notorious for being socially inept and overly jealous. This only makes my job easier, as the buyer doesn't want a stranger on their property, and the seller doesn't want anyone to know what he is buying next. This gives me a job as a middleman, and just raises the price of a lot of these plants. It is the plant equivalent of selling art or exotic cars - there is very little transparency and sales are behind closed doors. Here is a grouping of cycads that I dug up and prepped for a customer in Texas, these are all relatively rare and from Australia and the going price for all of these together is about $12k. There are some plants in these gardens that are half the size and about twice that price. When I say I dug them, I mean that I hired a group of day laborers for the day to dig and wrap them - my neck would be destroyed in an hour if I tried to move that stuff alone. Those plants are all around 25-35 years old.
Plant theft is a real thing in Florida and California, and people often get rare plants microchipped, much like you would a dog. There was a huge theft in 2009-2010 where one guy in Hollywood lost about 250k or so in cycads. He's pretty much a thief himself but since when was there honor amongst thieves?
http://www.cycadpalm.com/plthup.html
I have to keep some photos private, as they are of a collection I am currently helping document and catalog, and the new owner would probably fire me if he saw his plants on a public forum. I will see what I can do, however.
So as luck would have it, my computer restarted 3/4 the way through my last writeup - all was lost, F!CK! It was a flashback, but still its so annoying. I went to go look at computers today but there's so few middle of the road computers, anyone know where the BEST place is to get a deal on a computer is?
Per request, I'm going to do a little writeup on current work. As I mentioned before, I work in the plant industry. My love for plants, like for many of us and poker, can often be irrational and often lead to bad financial decisions. Where I make the most money in plants is brokering big, rare plants from collector's gardens to other collectors, chopping them up like bricks of weed like Nancy Botwin in Weeds and rerooting them for resale at a hefty profit. I was lucky to have a couple of very good mentors in the palm and cycad world, especially Crazy Eddie. Did I mention Crazy Eddie in my stories? He was the Phil Ivey of cycads, but a complete sociopath. Here is an example of one of the sales I did, just yesterday. This plant is called Encephalartos dyerianus, a cycad from the Transvaal in South Africa. I bought this plant for $500 out of my friend's yard and resold it literally the same day for $2500. There are probably only 10 or 15 of this species this size in the US, so when you have a plant that size, you can ask a premium. The guy even asked if he could dig it himself because he wanted to be extra careful - **** its 93 degrees out and you want to do my digging? Here's the shovel.
About 20% of my plant work is in the seeds and seedling business. I will acquire rare seeds and either flip them to growers around the world, or germinate them and the value of a seedling is often 5-10x what a seed is. I will also grow more common palms en masse to sell to field growers who just dig a hole in the ground and plant a tree. Getting seed from around the world requires patience, and often keeping a schedule with another part of the world in order to be in contact with them during their working hours. There is a huge boom of plant collectors in Thailand and Indonesia, so 7-8pm to 5am can often be a workday for me, much like poker. A few days ago, a friend of mine went to Cuba and sent me a photo of a palm I had never seen before, which is rare. Cuba is a hotbed of plant evolution because of its relative isolation and size as an island, and it is hard to get seeds out of the country, you have to bribe the government, then send them to Jamaica or the DR, and finally ship them to the US legally. Then again, when you find a palm that naturally looks like a pinwheel that someone spun and threw coke all over it, sometimes it's worth it.
When I say I do the brokering part, basically I locate mature plants for sale in gardens, and match them to my buyers. Plant collectors are notorious for being socially inept and overly jealous. This only makes my job easier, as the buyer doesn't want a stranger on their property, and the seller doesn't want anyone to know what he is buying next. This gives me a job as a middleman, and just raises the price of a lot of these plants. It is the plant equivalent of selling art or exotic cars - there is very little transparency and sales are behind closed doors. Here is a grouping of cycads that I dug up and prepped for a customer in Texas, these are all relatively rare and from Australia and the going price for all of these together is about $12k. There are some plants in these gardens that are half the size and about twice that price. When I say I dug them, I mean that I hired a group of day laborers for the day to dig and wrap them - my neck would be destroyed in an hour if I tried to move that stuff alone. Those plants are all around 25-35 years old.
Plant theft is a real thing in Florida and California, and people often get rare plants microchipped, much like you would a dog. There was a huge theft in 2009-2010 where one guy in Hollywood lost about 250k or so in cycads. He's pretty much a thief himself but since when was there honor amongst thieves?
http://www.cycadpalm.com/plthup.html
I have to keep some photos private, as they are of a collection I am currently helping document and catalog, and the new owner would probably fire me if he saw his plants on a public forum. I will see what I can do, however.
07-02-2017
, 12:25 PM
07-03-2017
, 12:13 AM
