Do you hate spreading expensive/ rare/unique butterflies?

Phanaeus1 I sent out my collection of 9 pair of in-the-envelope/papered specimens of Ornithoptera=9 pairs 9 (some of them rare!) to a butterfly dealer(he has a ad in the Insect Classifieds but I wont give a name/ as I think this dealer has enough problems already/but after 3 months of waiting and $400.00+ dollars later, the 2 packages arrived=both boxes looked as if they had been used for a hockey team practice session! upon opening the boxes, things were as bad as I expected: the beautifull Ornithoptera were mangled,wings broken.abdomens sheared off of the thoraxes, antennae broken in several places etc =A-I specimens turned to trash!A perfect storm as they say! the fragile and expensive cargo shipped in Riker Mounts were packed together with other heavy items,the large and Tall=from bottom to top of thorax bird wings were placed in too shallow Riker mounts= squashing them sideways.They never stood a chance to arrive at their destination in one piece.The brutal"handling by the U.S.P.S.was a major factor in demolishing the Ornithoptera BUT the "professional" who mounted them, had already ruined them before they were shipped(He Of Course conveniently blamed the postal system for All of the damage)It seems best to learn how to mount ones own specimens if at all possible(I learned this the hard way!One helfull method is to fix graph paper to ones spreading board(firmly) this really helps in lining up the wings on Lepidoptera etc.Buy a bunch of cheap,wholesale butterflies and use them to practice with/its probably better than worrying about the mail!

To buy expensive stuff you have to be reasonably sure you can spread it yourself without causing damage to the specimen.


It's not really worth buying expensive stuff if you always transform an A1 specimen into A1- while spreading it

I wouldn't trust others to do it for me unless I see the result first.

Bent shoulders is my biggest concern as it can't be corrected once it happens. Sometimes very difficult to avoid because of the way the specimen was killed (chemicals that permanently stiffen the specimen). Tried 3 Papilio androgeus Females from one dealer and failed all of them

That was the least worst result but specimen is still ruined. I kind of want to try another one from a different dealer but it's an expensive gamble

I totally forgot to set my avatar all this time.I was going to go with Hypolimnas pandarus to fit my name but it wasn't my picture. So I'll update my avatar every time I get a sought after species now

I'm not really good at spreading anything smaller than Perisama species... so I don't buy a lot of Lycaeniade. Lack of insect fairs here means it's not an option to buy my specimens prepared

About 15% of papered butterflies I buy on the internet (various dealers, ebay) are no good even though they were listed as A1. That happens with all sellers (some have a better average than others though)

if I spent a few dollars I just suck it up and buy it again eventually, but when a specimen is above 20$ and it's not the quality listed it's a real let down

I LOVE spreading expensive/rare/unique butterflies !!!
There is a thrill you will never experience with common backyard leps !

And yes, it happened to me to ruin some of them... that's the game...

The more thrilling is to spread some non-described taxon on which you know for sure they are future TYPE specimen... there you have a real pressure on your shoulders !

some pictures

fabrication！！