Once again (Juni 5)
Jaak Nouwen is in his 80-ies but still a popular scribe. This long distance player is very sceptical about Internet sales. He does not blame the sellers but the naivety of the buyers and the sites that promote pigeons too aggressively. They give the impression that if someone offers 50 pigeons or even 100 that they are all good, while it is well-known that no one has 10 real super pigeons.
He finds it all so misleading. He himself would never buy a pigeon that he had not handled. Which champion does? Or they must have an underlying reason.
However, you cannot blame it all on the people that are in charge of those sites. . Those are business people who want to make money and therefore making propaganda is a must. And which texts are not misleading in today's advertising world in general? But objectionable are the lies of some just before their "total" sale. Especially when they abuse their health.
OF COURSE
Of course, Nouwen is absolutely right when he claims that nobody has 10 real supers. And of course no one manages to breed 10% supers of all the babies that they breed. Those foreigners that have been buying birds for several years undoubtedly have experienced that themselves.
Why do you seldom see the names of Belgians and Dutch when babies are sold for crazy money? Because they know better and are more realistic. 20,000 euros or more for a young pigeon who still has to prove everything is insane.
Still for some buying such expensive birds is a good investment and a really lucrative business, as they are smart enough as to sell the babies of those expensive shit birds for good money as well.
To make good money you do not necessarily need good pigeons, but what you do need is names and impressing pedigrees. They are a must. It is also advisable to race a lot of pigeons so that results that are in fact far from good give another impression.
INVESTMENT
I once wrote about the babies of my v d Wouwer birds that no one wanted. Gaston v d Wouwer did not have a name then. Later he did get a great name and the same fanciers, Easterners obviously, that did not want the v d Wouwer birds now were begging for pigeons they did not want before. Similar examples there are numerous.
And talking about quality and ‘names’, Willy Daniels had a fantastic hen in 2017 and her sister was good as well. One of them was sold for 400,000 euros, nearly 500,000 USD. The pedigree of these hens are filled with names that no one has ever heard of.
BEGINNERS
For serious experienced fanciers there is nothing new in this article. But not every fancier is ‘serious and experienced’, there are others. Beginners in particular. There are not many of them but still there are some and with 5 of them I have ‘e mail contact’. They are all 5 very ambitious and competitive, one of them seems to be loaded with money and I am afraid it is this man that is not going to make it. His biggest mistake is that he buys old birds.
When fanciers want to get rid of old birds it is always for the same obvious reason. The other beginners do better. They do not buy old birds and they stick to 2 or 3 names only. They prefer to buy eggs, mostly in fall. One of those beginners bought some eggs from a fancier 3 years ago. He got rid of them since the birds turned out to be no good. So he bought more eggs. And guess what? He bought them from the same fancier.
Now we are some years later and so far it is this man who is the most successful of the 5. One other thing one should be aware of. Buying pigeons makes no sense if you put them into a loft that is no good or among a lot of pigeons that are no good or lack good health.
ME AND MYSELF
Why I keep on writing about this stuff? I want to open eyes and… I daresay as far as misconceptions are concerned, I know with all my experience a little about what I'm talking about. I also made mistakes. I also wasted money on paper tigers. And I want others not to make the same mistake that I made. With the pedigrees of most birds that I bought nothing was wrong. But in my younger years I was the man with a plan. And having a pack with fancy breath-taking pedigrees was not a part of the plan. I wanted good birds and I daresay I got good birds.
Furthermore you should know I never blamed the fanciers where I got shit birds. I just had bad luck. And I realise quite well that I unwillingly sell shit birds myself. As far as the purchased pigeons are concerned, I dareasy: The bigger the name and the more impressive the pedigree, the worse the pigeons. And that's good news for all those people who do not have that much money to buy.
PAPER
People often pay too much attention to paper and unfortunately not the results, buty the pedigrees. Some sellers realise too well that "the fuller the paper," the more eager some will be to buy. Check out pedigrees of some fanciers and you know what I mean. Champions like Marien, Roger Engelen, Harrie Smolders and many others are realistic. On their pedigrees there is almost no comment on pigeons much can be told about. By the way, talking about ‘leaf filling’.
The late auctioneer Stan Raeymakers also knew very well what impact paper could have. He once was in charge of an auction in which birds were sold ‘in bis’. ‘In bis’ means a lot of 2 birds of which the buyer can pick out one. The man who auctioned his birds was very worried buyers would pick the best of the birds sold in bis.
‘I will teach you something’ auctioneer Stan told him. Take the first two birds ‘in bis’ for arguments’ sake. Which bird would you want to keep: Lot 1a or Lot 1b. ‘1a’ the breeder said, that is the best. Stan advised him to comment as little as possible on ‘lot 1a’ and a lot of text on ‘lot 1b’. It worked! The birds that the fancier wanted to be sold were sold indeed and he could keep his favourites. Just as he wanted to.
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