I think 'proud' is not the right word. I ENJOY my plants. I don;t get the opportunity now to visit other people of my age or even a generation older who are also long term collectors. A couple gentleman who we are acquainted with live here in Florida about 2 hours from us. We always know about them years ago because we were on other forums and other sites with them that no longer exist. They have been collectors since the 70's, a full 20 years before me. SO you can imagine the scope of their collections.
The truth is that in the late 190's into the early to mid-2000's, that was the LAST aroid craze. The tissue culture company here is the US that was kind of in the lead of that so to speak is called Agristarts. They were responsible for a huge amount of the aroids being sold. Stuff like the Queen Anthurium, many bird nest types, veitchii, all of the jewel alocasias, and not just aroids...all the really cool ornamental bananas, gingers...all sorts of tropical plants. You used to be able to buy something like a Queen Anthurium for $25. Or an ALocasia cuprea for $10. A Musa Okinawa might run you $15. Look at those prices now.
Agristarts has changed their business model now to concentrate mainly on plants that have been patented. I know a guy here who grows and hybridizes gingers and he puts his things into tissue culture with them and told me that they will not even look at plant material now that is not patented. They are doing almost no aroids. Most of the aroids now are being tissue cultured in the Netherlands and in Asia. Agristarts is probably doing some dreck work churning out plain Monstera deliciosa and adansonii. It would be easy to find out by googling them and looking at what their websites say they are producing.If the did start producing plugs like they did in the old days, yes, I think prices would plummet.
I personally do not import plants. I was part of one group importation years ago, the main person who handled it was an established brick and mortar nursery who had all th import permits and stuff. I have no idea how it works. I have heard people say that you can impost up to 12 plants without a permit, they all have to have the proper Phytosanitary documents and of course cannot be rare or endangered as per CITES regulations. Bit that is not for me. Most of the aroids that are coming in as imports for these folks who want to resell them come in really rough, root systems cooked, leaves dead, they are always crying in their milk online saying they will have to do extensive rehab on their imports. I think its silly.
