Quote:
Originally Posted by Marty S
They still split them into colours, he claimed they mixed sections, that is different from colour. Section is the area they are from, colour is the colour of the fur.
Pale beaver from Alberta to Arkansas... pale beaver.
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I suspect he is playing fast and loose with the truth.
I expect they do mix pelts from different areas, why wouldn't they. It's all about the grade and color, that is what the furriers ask for.
I doubt very much that anyone other then a geneticist could tell the difference between a grade A++ pale pelt from Alberta and the same grade and color from Montana.
I have no problem believing that the further south one goes the less of top grade pelts one might find, but I doubt any one area has exclusively poor grade or poor color pelts.
That being said, it makes sense to me that a buyer would want to concentrate his efforts where they would get the best results. That's just good business sense.
And If I were looking for top quality pelts of a particular color, in large quantities, I would go to the fur auction.
It seems to me that paying a collection of local individuals with no fur grading training to find the best pelts of a particular color could prove to be overly expensive and fraught with potential hazards.
I could see one of those local agents collecting a ton of pelts and then this buyer declining to buy them saying they were not high grade, or more likely, offering a much lower price then expected, saying they were poor color or poor grade pelts.
It seems to me it would take a considerable investment in time and fuel to collect the desired pelts and I doubt very much that anyone would offer a guaranteed price for unseen pelts, which would leave the buyer, you, very vulnerable.