There were a lot of issues in the ginseng market before the current issues in Hong Kong. However, it seems that was the match that lit the fuse. My understanding is that there is a lot of inventory still left over from last year at those historically high prices. There are issues with the Chinese economy. There are continuing changes to the methods of import/export into and out of China. Hong Kong was the major portal to bring ginseng into China.
With unrest in Hong Kong, would you be willing to send several hundred thousand dollars worth of product not knowing for certain it would get it where it needed to go? Backing up one more step, would you be willing to invest hundreds of thousands of dollars to buy that product at a very high price when you still have inventory you bought last year at a historically high price?
Remember folks, perspective is everything. It seems to me as a society we have stopped caring about the perspective of others. With this goes the true American spirit in my opinion. We used to care about one another and listen to each others opinions and perspectives to learn, not to discredit or prop up our favorite opinion.
While I'm on my soap box, can someone please tell me why when a digger storms out my door with his Walmart bag of small, broken up pencil roots and tells me he will take them home and burn them rather than to take what I offer (if I offer anything at all) that he sees this as an ultimate insult to me? Just yesterday I had a guy bring me about 2 lbs in a big Walmart bag. Most of the weight was a dozen very large green/scaley bony roots, which I set aside at no value. Then, I picked through the busted up pencils to find maybe a half pound of very small, but pretty descent roots. I made him an offer based on current market prices and told him the rest would be at about a 1/3 of that price. Folks, that was money in his pocket. But of course, he bagged it back up and told me he would just throw it away before taking my offer. I wonder how he missed that I was overly relieved that I did not have to try and move that nasty stuff!