HGG Community Forums

For myself, I'll take anything no matter what. If it has a decent amount of points, say more than 150, I'll buy it. Regardless of whether the horse picks up many more points, it still adds to your show bonus. I don't usually sell my show ponies and I generally only keep my higher gen spays/geldings.

For any newer players out there now trying to figure out how to know if a show pony is a good deal--

Assume the horse will never earn another point in its life.

Take the current number of points the horse has (let's say 200 for ease of calculations) and figure out what roughly 3/4 of that is (150 in this case). This is how many hbs this horse will add to your show bonus on a weekly basis for the rest of its life.

Now figure out how many weeks there are til the horse hits its rollover between 17 and 18 years. Multiply that number by the 150 and you have your break even point--the maximum you can spend on the pony and expect to break even at the end.

Now, obviously, for horses that aren't leveled off, you can expect them to earn some more points but it's hard to predict how many. And if your prospective purchase has Levelled off in the top half of a class, it will continue to earn possibly quite a few points every week...but it's safest to do your calculation based on th points the horse actually has accumulat d and then decide how risky it is to purchase from there. After all, the point of show ponies is to make you money, not cost you in the long run. I don't care how pretty the show pony is, how many LE or special genes it has, what it's PT is....if you spend more than it's likely to make you, you've made a poor business choice.

Kass I'm actually loving your gen 3-5s in the auction these days....lots of pretty foals from your barns have made their way into my new show barns!

I'm picking up most everything you send with an 11 or over, some down to 10.6.

Happy to help, Waldgraf!