“My Melon” chalice frag, one was sold for $1.

Love them or hate them, “Live Sales” are here to stay. So what is a “Live Sale”? Vendors will host a sale, which as you probably guessed takes place in real time, on various internet forums. Reef2Reef is by far the most prevalent site for Live Sales. This time I’ll take you behind the scenes of “Cherry Royale”, Cherry Corals 7 Year Anniversary Live Sale that took place on September 21^st.

Live Sale prizes.

Live Sales can be loads of fun for the consumer since they’re real time sales from the comfort of your own home. But you better be quick! During a Live Sale the links posted to vendor’s sites are only good for that specific coral – first come first serve. Place your orders during the Live Sale and within a few days have the corals you ‘won’ land on your door step via the vendor’s chosen courier. Not only are you offered fantastic deals on corals, but sometimes there are a handful of $1 corals (yes, you read that correctly) for sale as well. Todd Cherry and Brett Harris of www.CherryCorals.com had an enormous amount of prizes you could win during this event through various raffles and other games such as “Caption This”, where forum members rallied trying to post the best caption for a photo posted by Todd. This year there were nearly 600 corals offered during the Live Sale.

“Mystic Grape” Favia.

“Darth Maul” Favia.

“Lil’ Sumpin'” Acanthastrea.

“Jingle Bells” Cyphastrea.

“Master” Scolymia offered during the Live Sale.

These sales take unbelievable amounts of time for vendors to plan and execute. All corals for the Live Sale must be grown out, plugged and healed, or at the very least make their way through quarantine protocols once received and given time to settle into systems. Todd and Brett then have to photograph each and every exact coral (WYSIWYG), create a link to their website that can be easily and quickly posted real time during the sale, and make sure to stay on schedule in order to keep customer’s happy and ready for the next barrage of corals.

The FedEx guys love deliveries like this towards the end of the day.

And the Live Sale begins! Armed with a myriad of food and beverages, ready to take on the next 12 hours during the Live Sale, all seems to be going smoothly as Todd and Brett post away. What happens next? Well during this specific event, the server crashes! Fortunately Todd and Brett were able to remedy the situation within about fifteen minutes and everyone’s heart rate began to return to normal pace. Server crashes due to overloaded websites from a surplus of customers at one time have prematurely ended Live Sales on more than one occasion. www,Reef2Reef.com has even experienced a couple of crashes in the past during these events, and that site is designed to regularly host more people than most any vendors website out there.

So what are you waiting for? Make sure to tune into the next Live Sale you see happening; you might find your next centerpiece at an exceptionally discounted price, and at the same time win some great reefing equipment or paraphernalia which is sure to make all your fellow reefers jealous.