The market has crashed!

[Nudibranch]

I have just bought exactly what you are after, only 6 yr old but as wise as they come. 3/4 ID x clyde. Safe as houses, walked past the combine this morning. Kind, easy and comfy to ride but rather unbalanced and in need of schooling. Biggest expense will be the clipper blades. 3 1/2k, she is good enough to show as a maxi and if I can get her ticket for HOY's she will easily be worth double what I gave for her.

Correct safe horses will always fetch good money and so they should in my view. How do you value safety ?

I've had three horses in the past who have been absolutely excellent on the roads, the most reliable of all being an ex racer, costing £500. I'm not interested in showing it, hunting it, competing it - I have my sports boy for that. As far as I am concerned it could be 19 and semi retired, scarred, whatever. Just sound and road safe. I don't think that ought to command a ridiculous price; if it does, then there really is something wrong with the market.

 

[AdorableAlice]

tbh not sure the market has crashed, I brought at a reasonable price at the beginning of the year - by no means what I would call a bargain (£4.5k for an uncompeted 6yo of indifferent breeding fresh from ireland, unshod etc. etc.) but he had what I was looking for and so willing to pay and now am at livery on a yard where they buy and sell a few as a side line and they are having no problem moving horses on in a range of ages and types for good prices.


Yes there are a lot of ads to sort through as a buyer and if the picture is bad a good horse might get missed but I was shocked by the number of poorly conformed horses that I saw too, and whilst some looked ok in the pictures in real life there were obvious issues either with conformation or gait.



I agree, so many adverts are poorly worded and/or the picture is awful, the vendors are not helping themselves at all. I was looking, in a half hearted fashion, for a useful hunting type cob recently and actually bought the very first horse I saw and tried via a Horsequest advert.

The wording was well done but the picture was dreadful, taken on an angle, it showed the cob with a head like a bucket, a back as long as a wet weekend, a backside that was in the next County and, due to the markings on it's forelimb, it appeared to have no bone at all. I viewed it purely because it's write up was good and it was only 35 miles up the motorway. As I drove there I was thinking, what a waste of time this is going to be.

The real thing proved to be a stunning maxi show cob in the making, owned by the most lovely, if very in-experienced family, with a genuine reason for selling a rather green but honest mare. The picture had totally mis-represented the horse, in my favour really!, because if a good one had been put on the advert the professional showing people would have been queuing up to buy the cob.

I do think buyers need to be open minded and realise a flashy picture can result in a moose in the flesh and a poor picture can hide what is a really smart type. Why do vendors put pictures of horses lay down, grazing or just looking over a door ? Surely it is simple to stand it up square and take a picture.

 

[whiteclover]

Im trying to sell my horsebox at the moment and Ive had no interest whatsoever.

 

[Capriole]

I agree, so many adverts are poorly worded and/or the picture is awful, the vendors are not helping themselves at all. [...]
.

Thats worked in our favour more than once. Shocking bad pic of a scruffy looking horse in a field in Ireland, taken by someone with zero photographic and presentation skills. Fabulous horse and a cracking price as lots of people must have skimmed over the ad

We've also got one where the initial ad just said 'Horse'