Fortune in collecting

[goliathomega]

I remember reading quite a while ago some articles about famous insect collectors from the 19. century and how some of them became quite wealthy as a result of their passion.

Now, I don't know that much about professional collecting, apart from buying a few specimens from foreign individuals, but can you really earn well collecting insects and selling them?

I mean doing something in the spirit of going to some remote region and (hopefully) returning safe and sound with precious creepy cargo - not reselling something you got from someone else.

[papilio28570]

Odds of funding an expedition to a remote place and returning a significant profit....I'd say no.

[saturniidave]

I agree.
In those days pretty much everything 'exotic' was new and folks would pay big bucks for them. Now it is only really rare stuff that makes loads of money, and that is a moot point too!
The only way of earning a living by selling insects would be to actually live in an area little explored so that you could collect on your own doorstep things no-one else offers for sale. That is assuming of course that the country you lived in allowed it.

[Deleted]

It is quite funny, how poor villagers in Nepal and Tibet , are catching butterflies like Iphiclides podalirinus or some rare Bhutanitis and then selling them to some local seller at prices as low as 10 dollars! Those same sellers which get them for those prices sell them later for 200 dollars or more, to some chinese sellers, and in the end after changing hands a few times they all end up all around ebay and so on at 800 dollars or 1000 dollars or more....

Now imagine the easy money to be made, if those exact poor villagers would get some determination, a computer, access to internet, some basic knowledge of english and sell each lets say at 200 dollars, plenty of buyers and a wealthy life for them, same applies to countries such as angola, togo, congo.

So, yes it is possible to make a profit from it, if you do live in the right place, as Saturniidave said.

[lucanidae25]

I've been to Tibet myself this year, it's not ture. You can't find local Tibetan to do any kind of collecting because of what they believe in and no matter how much money you offer them. They just won't do it. To them money isn't the most important thing in the world but their believe is. They don't believe in killing any kind of living organism. I think you will find the same in Nepal or Bhutan. I wish I can pay the locals to collect beetles for me so it'll be so much easier for me but instead I have to collect everything myself. Most Tibetan insects are collected by the mainland Chinese travels from other parts of China.

I hate to think how much I have sell my materials in-order to cover all my flights, expenses and labour.

[Deleted]

Well I have been to Yunnan and Sichuan provinces before, where I know about locals collecting butterflies, and a few Chinese collectors converging there in the high season. I though those same collectors collect in Tibet as well, due to its proximity, Also I think that not every single person in Nepal or Tibet folows the same believes, even If I do agree that the most won't collect, I have to admit I was wrong naming Tibetan or Nepalese villagers, due to their believes, but concerning the Iphiclides podalirinus and such species you can read about what I told you in here

insectnet.proboards.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=leps&thread=1224&page=1

I know about it myself, as I bought a male and a two rare saturniids from a chinese collector residing in Tibet, total for about 200 dollars.

[lucanidae25]

Yunnan is totally different to Tibet, it's part of the mainland Chinese. Totally different cultures and Yunnan will never try and separate from the mainland China. I've been to Yunnan myself for quite a number of years now and finding catchers in Yunnan wouldn't be difficult but Tibet would be. There's a plice checkpoint at every little town to see if everyone has the right visa or ID to enter. I can't even remember how many of those I have to go through when I was traveling in Tibet. The borders are even worse. I can't even make a phone call internationally and restrictions on internet access by the Chinese government at Lhasa etc etc. If you haven't been there youself then you have no idea.

One thing I will never do is calling Tibetan poor. From what I've seen in Tibet, they aren't poor.