Poecilotheria Metallica

Dark

Arachnobaron
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Hi. Does anyone have this species of tarantula. I have seen them for sale but they are babies. If you have this tarantula please paste pictures. If you sell this tarantula I would like to buy one. The place that sells them are very good with tarantulas but I don't have the money to buy them.






From
Eric
 

xanderTluv

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Friend this species is rare to the hobby right now! And as far as I know there have only been a few clutches in the states! For a spiderling you will pay 350 and up! Not to many of us can afford paying this for a spiderling when mortality rates are so high, and the chances of it being a male are great, and there are not any females to mate it with! To insure that you will get one through to adult hood and to better the chance of you getting a female you would have to buy 2 or more!
I guess the vast majority of us will have to wait for more clutches.
 

Dark

Arachnobaron
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Originally posted by xanderTluv
Friend this species is rare to the hobby right now! And as far as I know there have only been a few clutches in the states! For a spiderling you will pay 350 and up! Not to many of us can afford paying this for a spiderling when mortality rates are so high, and the chances of it being a male are great, and there are not any females to mate it with! To insure that you will get one through to adult hood and to better the chance of you getting a female you would have to buy 2 or more!
I guess the vast majority of us will have to wait for more clutches.
The store has 6 of them and they are around $400.00 dollers. I might buy a female when they get older. I heard they grow very fast and should be ready to breed in a year or two. The store might lower the price after they breed them. One of the members on boards work at the store and he has one. I probably will wait for more clutches.


From
Eric
 

rosehaired1979

Arachnoking
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Ok if you wait whe they get older and they get sexed most likely there price is going to go way up. I mean the seller may go down but probably not as low as you would pay for a spiderling.
 

Code Monkey

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Originally posted by darkpredator3
I might buy a female when they get older. I heard they grow very fast and should be ready to breed in a year or two. The store might lower the price after they breed them.
Buy a known adult female that is a proven breeder? The US market doesn't even have adult females yet but I'll tell you two things about your idea: one, odds are the store isn't going to still have them in a year or two as even at those $400 range prices the demand has outstripped the supply and, two, in a year or two if there was somehow a known female breeder I'd say the price would be more like $1500 if not a *lot* more.

Let's assume that you could get a female from one of these $400 slings and that she turned out to be a proven breeder. If you were reasonably lucky, you could easily get more than $10000 from her selling slings for $125-$150, and if the market was still bearing higher costs it's positively obscene how much a known adult female would be worth to the owner. What exactly would possess someone to sell a female that can produce a clutch of 50+ young that are worth hundreds of dollars as soon as they emerge from the sac for *less* money then they are going for now as unsexed slings?

Now, your language was not clear and maybe you meant to say that once they begin to be bred in the U.S. that the store will be lowering the prices on slings, and at that you would be right, but not by much, not for a while. In 2-3 years we *might* be down to the $150 P. metallica for an unsexed sling assuming that they continue to trickle in from Europe and that breeding turns out to be success on a routine bases. Still, known females would still go for more than your out-of-reach $400 mark even at that hypothetical price point.

This is a 'crown jewel' species. All you can do is wait, but even that is going to just make them somewhat affordable. Known females are going to remain obscenely expensive for years. Set yourself a pricepoint at which you'd be willing to buy 2-3 slings and when they get there, buy.
 

Angelo

Arachnobaron
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this might have been asked before, but are there still more wild caught p. metallicas being shipped to europe or the states for captive breeding?:?
 

Andrew vV

Arachnobaron
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I believe there were only a handfull of adults caught, and are all still in Europe?? Definetly some CB subadults by now in north america:)
heres a sling
 
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Code Monkey

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Originally posted by Angelo
this might have been asked before, but are there still more wild caught p. metallicas being shipped to europe or the states for captive breeding?:?
There were only six or seven pairs initially and, officially at least, that's it for the wild caught stock. Since as best I know even those initial breeding pairs were smuggled I doubt that anyone still bringing this very expensive T into Europe would be bragging. Maybe some of our European members can shed more light on what they think is going on.
 

Code Monkey

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Originally posted by brgn
To my knowledge, the metallica's was exported legally. This is from an earlier thread:

You can find the thread here: http://www.arachnoboards.com/ab/showthread.php?s=&threadid=7908&highlight=poecilotheria+metallica

Robert
Fair enough. I've been sort of fuzzy on what the status was. The European hobby was pretty open about the initial importation but I was never sure if that was because it was because it was legit or because who the heck could keep their mouths shut about such a score ;)
 

Code Monkey

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Originally posted by brgn
To my knowledge, the metallica's was exported legally. This is from an earlier thread:

You can find the thread here: http://www.arachnoboards.com/ab/showthread.php?s=&threadid=7908&highlight=poecilotheria+metallica
Follow up on this. I was catching up on my Arachnid_world and came across this very subject covered by no less than Rick West...

Technically, there is no such thing as legal collection and exportation of any Poecilotheria. However, India's wildlife laws did not specify theraphosids up until the removal of P. metallica (they were still covered under a blanket wildlife statement). Because of this, once the Pokies made it to the airport odds are no one would challenge their presence (and if they did, a little money slipped to the inspector would have got you past). In the case of the 7 openly "exported" metallica, the collector was stopped but the official after interpreting the law as written granted permission. Once outside of the country, because they're not CITES listed, it was green light all the way.

So, while a lot of people say to themselves they were exported legally since there was no specific ban of exporting Pokies at the time they were removed, the Indian gov't was apparently upset enough to add a provisionary clause to their wildlife "protection" laws that specifically mentions large theraphosids.

They may have flown first class (well probably coach) but they were still "smuggled".




This is the words of the guy who brought them out (posted on Arachnid_world last August):
For Metallica I got 7 spiders and has made 3 cocoons until now. I do know if the metallica was legal exportet or not... fact is that I was stopped in the Airport by the indian customs... I told them about my spiders and showed them a 5 year old permission I got from another trip.. after 3 hours waiting I talked to the chief of Indian Wildlife in Bombay, he looked through the papers and heard my story... and as it was only 7 metallica spiders and 2 ground living chilobrachys... he wrote me a permission to bring out these spiders....Well am I a smugler or what....maybe he made a mistake according to other here on the list.. it was a mistake.. but is it my problem???
 
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