Should Koi Hobbyists be Wary of The Word Tategoi?

A great subject clearly and well explained.

A very well put,clear message to be heard there Ricky. I can understand koi keepers enthusiasm to have Tategoi in there collection but at the end of day and as the word suggests 'fish of the future' doesn't always go the way the dealer or keeper expected and there is never a guarantee . There was a guy i heard about the other day who spent ¥5,000,000 on a Sansai Gin Rin Kohaku in the no1 auction and 1 year later is now ShiroMuji !

A great watch

Great video again

Great video.. can you explain when the breeder does sembetsu, do the fish which are discarded get sold to wholesalers and are these the fish that are sold by dealers at a lower price, i.e the fish in the 20 pound range.

100% agree with you Ricky👍 If a UK dealer ever says Tategoi to me then I immediately become nervous about the price they are likely to charge. Tategoi in Japan aren’t always the best looking fish at that point, they are the koi that the breeder sees as being their best koi with a future, as they will have a much better understanding than anyone else of how the koi could improve. I have bought some very high class koi and left them in Japan, and after 1 or 2 years they have completely gone downhill. Your comments on Takeshita are also spot on. Sometimes they are ok quality but if the breeders koi are in demand they can also be expensive. However, there are some periods when a breeder has so many great quality koi that year, that they have to let some go as they just don’t have enough mud pond space. A good example of this is a koi that I have, an 89cm shiro utsuri. It was spawned by Omosako from Panda, and they had so many high quality tosai, they sold 100 to Okawa, and I bought this koi at Sansai. It is now 14 years old and still great quality.

On my first trip to Niigata, I was told that whilst there are many breeders who produce quality koi year in year out, never pre-determine what breeders fish will be like. Just go in to their koi houses and look at what they have, as they do have some great koi some years and pretty average the next. I went to Hosokai in January 2017 and some of his nisai were exceptional. On asking him about his showa and kohaku bloodline as I was interested in several nisai he had for sale. He kindly showed us into his oyagoi house, and informed us that the showa were from Dianichi parents and kohaku from Murata parents, with no cross breeding. Therefore I was happy to buy 2 kohaku and 3 showa at a very good price and all shipped in one box. If I had bought the same fish from Murata and Dianichi I would probably be minus one kidney...

Maruhiro round pond - not a world renowned breeder but he has some amazing examples of almost every type of koi in that one pond, and I’ve yet to see anyone ask for a price without having to sit down afterwards...

I had some idea of what a tetegoi is but you nailed it and made it very clear to me. I have a couple of koi that I wish I had gotten rid of earlier but now years later so glad that I did not.

The over use of the word tategoi frustrates the hell out of me. One of my favourite dealers calls practically everything tategoi, even those riddled with obvious faults. They will argue the meaning of the word, but fact is good koi sell themselves, calling them tategoi just stops me from buying because to my mind they have been price marked up to try and justify the tategoi title. Even Mike Snaden never advertised koi as tategoi, yet his were the closest to actually being tategoi! Anyway, enjoyed your rant.

Great video, Tategoi really is just the term used for the koi that a breeder has chosen to grow on as they see future potential so if a koi is for sale it cannot be a tategoi 🤷‍♂️. As you suggest one mans trash is another mans treasure anyway. Always buy what you like (if it’s available for sale) 🤨👍