This is a very interesting topic.

A collection of perfect shells gives long lasting pleasure to look
at.  You never get bored. It is my personal experience that defect
shells attract the look to the defect too often, and when mixed with
perfect shells they take down the whole collection and one gets a
messy impression and in the very long run one may get tired of this
collection.

On the other hand, it is impossible to make a quite complete
collection of a given family without accepting imperfect shells: many
species have never been collected in perfect condition. A collection
of Conidae with perfect lips will only be a fraction of the complete
family. 70 % are virtually impossible to get with perfect lips,
without sponge holes or growth lines.

My personal satisfaction giving solution is: I put only perfect
shells on display, so I never get tired. The study material is stored
away in a systematic way. Unless it concerns a fantastic species
which I want to see, even imperfect.

As for the markets: paying customers expect the best possible
quality. But we think there is a market for defect shells. Possibly
we will open a line at very cheap prices to get rid of the tons of
stocked away material which is not perfect, but top interesting for
the scientific  collection. I would appreciate the opinion of the
shellers here: are you interested to buy cheap defected shells ? And
do you prefer to buy "sets" (ex: 25 Olango shells for 10 $) or
individual pieces at 1 $ or so ?

Best regards,

Guido

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