It saddens me to see these discussions turn ugly. The truth is no one really knows what happened exactly. And it can be tough to explain to guys that have not been around very long so see the Acanthastrea saga play out.
A lot of answers can be made by simply doing a RC search for Acanthastrea for all forums, and start at the beginning.
One of the threads you will find back in November of 2003 is this one.
http://archive.reefcentral.com/forum...t=acanthastrea
The surfacing of a Japanese web site with some beautiful Acanthastrea started getting passed around. This was the first many had ever heard of this coral. And while Eric believes he was responsible for the craze by stating in a thread that they were his favorite coral, I don't think that had anything to do with it. That thread was from 10/1/03 and still has less than 300 views.
Here is another thread from way back. Only a few reefers in this country had these corals in there possession, but you won't see anyone calling them rare.
http://archive.reefcentral.com/forum...t=acanthastrea
Once this thread was started in early 2004, the pictures started to flow and it became a spitting contest of who had the nicest piece. (117162 views)
http://archive.reefcentral.com/forum...t=acanthastrea
The thread became very informative on coral care, and also put this coral on the map. Still, not many were around. Most were purchased under different names. It wasn't a coral you could just walk into any LFS or even wholesaler and purchase. If you could, there would have been a lot more of them around.
Now in 2005, things have changed and you can pick up a small colony of A.lordhowensis much easier.
The idea of the of the Acan market being artificially inflated is interesting. Not sure if there are any facts to back this up. I wouldn't know.
What I do know if that if you do that same search for Acanthastrea, and start at the beginning, you will see that there were not many people selling these corals. And the first frags that were sold were a little less than 50.00 per polyp. This was the market price from the very beginning for these corals in this country. Even though demand shot through the roof for them, the price stayed the same with the exception of wildly colored pieces.
With a coral that grows as fast as this one does, how in the world could a price fix be in affect? Not even a few months later did many people that purchased them resell some of their new growth. It was demand that kept the prices high, IMO.
Maybe there was some sort of Conspiracy theory behind it all. That sounds a lot more far fetch than people really wanting the coral, and shelling out anything they could afford to get it.
In my opinion, the facts are in the old threads. While everyone now has an opinion on the matter, you can't change the past.
You be the judge on what happened. Why this coral became popular, and why so many would pay dearly for the next crazy color morph. If you really want to know, then read through. Though, most of the time, many of the posters wanting answers don't really want to know. They just want to stir the pot. I can't blame them. It's a fun pot to stir since it brings out so many emotions.
But that's what this community is all about.
Isn't it?
PS When I spoke of Acanthastrea in this thread, I was referring only to the lord type. Not echinata.