There is a wide range of prices from those that can be secured for stock of the quality that wins at the greatest shows, to those that can be obtained for the kind that wins at ordinary small shows. High prices are paid for noted winners and for other stock of the same breeding, as much for the advertising value of ownership of fine stock as for the actual value of the birds to breed from or to exhibit again. A breeder who wins at some very small show may find it hard to sell either stock or eggs for hatching except at a slight advance over market prices. Some breeders who have made remarkable records in winning at the best shows can get very high prices for their prize-winning stock and for the eggs from it. Fowls sometimes sell as high as $500 each, and eggs at $2 each. Pigeons also bring very high prices at times, although fewer people are interested in them and sales are not so numerous. The ordinary prices for good stock are quite reasonable, considering how few really fine specimens are produced. The average novice finds that fowls at from $10 to $25 a trio and pigeons at from $5 to $15 a pair have all the quality that he can appreciate.
In the early days of modern fancy poultry culture those breeders who had great reputations could get relatively high prices for almost any bird that would pass as a breeding specimen of its kind. This is still true of breeders who successfully introduce new varieties or who suddenly attain prominence with stock of their own breeding. But as the stock of a leading breeder becomes widely distributed among smaller breeders, the competition of his customers reduces his sales, and especially the sales of the cheaper grades of stock. The most troublesome problem that the best breeders have is to get rid of the lower grades of their stock at a fair profit.
=Why good breeders have much low-priced stock.= Novices in the breeding of fine stock commonly suppose that all pure-bred stock of any variety is of uniform quality. When they learn that, as a rule, only a small part of the young birds hatched from good stock is considered of superior quality, they often conclude that the ideas and the standards of fanciers must be wrong. Even professional and scientific men who become interested in fancy poultry and pigeons often take this view and, after considering the question carefully from their standpoint, try to explain to fanciers how, by changing a standard, they might secure a much larger proportion of specimens approximately perfect according to the standard used. In the case of varieties in which the finest specimens of the different sexes are secured from different matings, many novices waste a great deal of time trying to convince old fanciers that their standards and methods are illogical and unnatural.