At 09:08 AM 8/27/98 -0400, you wrote:
>Tom,
>Aren't you glad you didn't buy that gloriamaris!!
>I paid $75.00 apiece for my first two Cypraea teulerei, 30 years ago.
> Now you can get a nice one for $10.00.  You are right about shells
>not being a good investment (financially speaking).  They almost
>always decrease in value over time.  A few species may be on the
>brink of extinction, particularly terrestrial species; but usually if
>a marine species is still living, then somewhere there has to be a
>population dense enough to ensure that individuals can find mates.
>The "loners" that are collected over a widespread area usually just
>represent individuals that were carried away from the breeding area
>as floating larvae.  Conus gloriamaris was being collected at the
>rate of one or two specimens per year, until a couple of guys went to
>a small unpopulated island in the Philippines and collected 80 of them
>in one afternoon, and the price dropped accordingly.  Today, many
>areas are known where that species can be collected, and the shell,
>while still uncommon, is not a great rarity.  There may be a locality
>where Conus cervus is equally common.  If so, eventually someone will
>find it, and the price will drop.  As you noted, some values do
>increase over time, but usually not as fast as inflation, therefore
>the net effect is a decrease in value.
>There is an old story, I'm not sure how true, about Epitonium
>scalare.  As the story goes, some European emperor owned the only
>known specimen.  When a second specimen became available, the emperor
>paid a fabulous price at auction for the shell, then put it on the
>floor and stomped on it, thereby ensuring that his first specimen
>remained the one and only.  Hopefully most of us approach our
>collections with a bit more reserve than that.
>Paul M.
>Providence, Rhode Island, USA
>
 
My opinion on rare mollusca is that there really aren't many rare species,
just undiscovered or unaccessable habitats, thus making them a poor
financial investment.  You should collect for beauty and not value.
Horatio