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Post by Paul K on Apr 15, 2020 15:04:05 GMT
The same eBay seller (https://www.ebay.com/usr/universal_butterflies), who is offering the Colias, last week had a melanic P. machaon on auction which was at over $1,700 a few days before it ended. I don't know what the final sale price was. Now he has another less melanic P. machaon aberration for sale. His eBay home page states: 'Universal Butterflies is a small butterfly farm located in Italy. We are mainly specialised in butterfly aberrations.' The second sentence should read "We are mainly specialised in making chemically induced butterfly aberrations to sell at ridiculous prices to gullible collectors." There is a big difference in rarity between natural aberrations and artificial ones, and some people are cashing in on their knowledge while they can. Adam. Totally agreed with Adam. Far too many chemical aberrations are made, and the sellers have flooded the market, that is why the prices for these abs remain low. Cannot see why anybody in their right mind would pay such a large price for a chemical melanic swallowtail on ebay, many, many were made by one European dealer. Certainly do not agree that they are worth every Euro, £ or $. The chemical melanic swallowtails don't hold a candle to the historic ab. obscura and ab. niger that were bred by selective skilled breeders, or were a red letter day one off . Not too sure why you would want chemical abs in your collection, although plenty do, even serious wild aberration collectors have. I guess they are just eye- catching space fillers. I totally agree with Peter For me chemically induced abs are worthless. I may as well cut four different species wings, glue to the body and have a nice aberration, maybe I should even sell them on eBay 😆
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Post by Adam Cotton on Apr 15, 2020 15:24:12 GMT
Sorry I couldn't add any pictures because of the following error code (Unable to upload file Error: This forum has exceeded its attachment space limit. Your file cannot be uploaded.) pips, Welcome to the ICF. Please see collector-secret.proboards.com/thread/11/attach-picture for how to put photos in your post. Unfortunately it is no longer possible to upload a photo directly to the forum. It is necessary to upload your photos to a website and post links to the photos. We recommend imgur.com as a free photo-hosting website that is easy to use and even provides coded links to produce photos like the ones I posted previously in this thread. Adam.
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Post by nomad on Apr 15, 2020 16:33:08 GMT
But if the seller just wants to make big money selling to uninformed buyers that is his good right. mmm sounds like taking advantage I would say. Still some have plenty of money to spend, so its their right to spend their money as they wish. Not too sure what a PHD got to do with it, if its a money making exercise. Plenty have made them without those credentials.
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Post by Paul K on Apr 15, 2020 19:40:02 GMT
But if the seller just wants to make big money selling to uninformed buyers that is his good right. mmm sounds like taking advantage I would say. Still some have plenty of money to spend, so its their right to spend their money as they wish. Not too sure what a PHD got to do with it, if its a money making exercise. Plenty have made them without those credentials. And the seller is not specifying how those aberrations are obtained.
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Post by Adam Cotton on Apr 15, 2020 19:44:13 GMT
And the seller is not specifying how those aberrations are obtained. I think that is the crux of the problem. I would have no objection if he clearly stated that his aberrations are chemically induced. The problem is, people wouldn't pay large sums for the specimens if he did. Adam.
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pips
New Aurelian
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Post by pips on Apr 16, 2020 18:50:28 GMT
Thank you Adam for the info on how to add pictures. I hope this will work...
Following pictures are from the wild Issoria lathonia aberration
The following pictures are from a chemical induced specimen.
As these are very similar to the wild caught one I find them helpful to add to my wild caught collection.
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Post by nomad on Apr 18, 2020 8:21:59 GMT
Pips. You are very lucky to have caught a wild Issoria lathonia aberration. It was this such red letter days that lived long in the memory of the heyday of British butterfly collectors, as such an event might happen one or twice in a lifetime, or to very lucky collectors several times. When people visited their homes, the collector would proudly show off his most prized aberrations and perhaps recount the capture to his admiring friend. British butterfly aberrations really started the cheque book collectors. Its like anything else, the more money you have the more you can buy, thus some very impressive aberration collections were built up by the wealthy and rich, and when their collections came for sale, all those with money to spare competed with each other at auctions to own these aberrations. Melanic Fritillary aberrations in the wild are due to extremes of temperature in the pupa stage, and this is borne out because cold shock and chemical injection replicates these aberrations to a high degree. That's the problem with Papilio machaon cold shock and chemical injection, they cannot produce replicas of the old black historical P. machaon, because breeding proved these were genetic. The cold shock and chemical injection Papilio machaon while they are often extreme, always have plenty of yellow coming through. Such was the failure to produce similar P. machaon aberration that certain people resorted to Ink, dyeing specimens black, but the obvious bit is the inky black abdomen with matted hairs, the melanic originals at least had some of the original colour on the abdomen.
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Post by Adam Cotton on Apr 18, 2020 9:19:50 GMT
nomad, Interestingly the underside of the old black machaon ab. niger are also black on the underside, unlike the chemically induced specimens. I have photos of a specimen in BMNH from Magdeburg, Russia which was also figured in Verity's Rhopalocera Palaearctica and another from Poznan, Poland in ZSSM (Munich). I am not sure whether these specimens are also genetic or not. Did you see the underside of the black machaon you examined? Adam.
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Post by nomad on Apr 18, 2020 11:48:10 GMT
I believe all these early P. machaon ab niger, which includes the BMNH from 'Magdeburg, Russia and from Poznan, Poland in ZSSM (Munich) were original genetic examples. Yes, the undersides of P. machaon ab niger are also black as far as I have seen in the BMNH, and A.S. Harmer in Variation in British Butterflies (2000) shows a male of the melanic P. machaon ab obscura (Plate 4) which has a black underside with no yellow markings at all. So it would be easy to tell an original genetic melanic specimen if anybody was lucky enough to find one, from a chemical/cold shock P. machaon.
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Post by Adam Cotton on Apr 18, 2020 12:54:25 GMT
Thanks for the interesting reply. The problem is that the natural melanic aberration that I posted photos above still has more yellow than normal on the underside, rather than the melanism being present on both sides of the wings.
Perhaps the genetic melanic aberrations actually lack the ability to make yellow pigment, or otherwise it is possible that black pigment is 'switched on' for almost all scales on the wings of these aberrations, which swamps any yellow pigment.
Adam.
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Post by wollastoni on Apr 19, 2020 12:56:10 GMT
Anyone knows which chemicals are used by Marco Gottardo to produce such abs ? Some results are pretty impressive.
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pips
New Aurelian
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Post by pips on Apr 19, 2020 17:14:48 GMT
Exact chemicals used won't be said by Marco as it is his own goldmine. Oxyanions such as sodium tungstate, sodium molybdate, and molybdic acid are often used. Sodium tungstate has the same (or even better) effect as cold shock treatment so this is the most "nature-correct" substance to use. You can find a lot of scientific papers about this method. I must admit that Marco his aberrations are amongst the most extreme I have ever seen so I think he uses also other chemicals and in different concentrations.
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Post by nomad on Apr 20, 2020 10:42:13 GMT
Exact chemicals used won't be said by Marco as it is his own goldmine. Oxyanions such as sodium tungstate, sodium molybdate, and molybdic acid are often used. Sodium tungstate has the same (or even better) effect as cold shock treatment so this is the most "nature-correct" substance to use. You can find a lot of scientific papers about this method. I must admit that Marco his aberrations are amongst the most extreme I have ever seen so I think he uses also other chemicals and in different concentrations. Does he do Papilio Machaon. If so is there a link to his specimens?
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Post by Adam Cotton on Apr 20, 2020 13:00:08 GMT
He does, the one from ebay that everyone hated for some reason was his I don't think that everyone hated his machaon females. They are very nice butterflies, but I wouldn't pay a fortune for artificially produced specimens if I was an aberration collector. What I think people here 'hated' was the effective CON BY OMISSION, not stating in the eBay item page that these aberrations are chemically induced. The implication from his home page is that he has a farm producing aberrations - the unstated impression given to a reader is that these are BRED, but in fact they are chemically induced by INTERFERING with the pupa. Adam.
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Post by Adam Cotton on Apr 20, 2020 20:59:26 GMT
Marco, Good to see that you are replying to criticism on this thread. I hope that you don't take comments in this thread personally. I would like to stress that the ONLY objection I have (I cannot talk for other members) to the price that your superb first melanic female raised is that as far as I could see there was no statement provided on the eBay item page or the seller's homepage that the aberrations offered are not natural. People who bid on the melanic machaon female were almost certainly unaware that it was artificially produced. The ab. evittata that was offered for sale was natural and there is a difference between someone offering a specimen for sale privately at a very high price and people bidding on an eBay item. When you bid for something on eBay you are entering an agreement to pay that amount for the item if your bid is the highest, but if someone offers something for sale directly potential buyers have the choice of either buying it or not, for whatever reason. Obviously if the price that a specimen is offered at is deemed too expensive no-one will buy it, and of course likewise no-one will bid more than they are prepared to pay on eBay. My objection (as I said in the first paragraph) is purely that potential buyers were not made aware of the origin of the specimen's melanism. In my opinion, although it may technically not be legal fraud it is moral fraud, but maybe that opinion is based on me being an old Brit (dinosaur? ) who was brought up to have different values to modern people. Having lived in SE Asia for 40 years I get the impression that values in the West are different to those that I learnt as a child. I would be very upset if I had bought something special only to learn subsequently that it wasn't genuine. It's a bit like being offered something that looked just like a real Picasso, only to discover after buying it that it was a copy. Chao, Adam. PS. I would like to add that I have absolutely nothing against anyone who makes artificial aberrations for sale. If you can sell specimens for as much money as possible then great for you, but I would like to see a statement of the true origin of any aberrations offered, that way no-one will be disappointed.
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