Credit Crunch and cavaliers?

Is it my imagination or is the price of BY cavaliers tumbling?
On a certain site where they're often advertised I've seen prices of dogs falling by more than 30% in some cases, and the same cavaliers being advertised and readvertised.
Wouldn't it be good if it became less financially lucrative to engage in puppy farming? Although I expect the export market will continue to thrive.
Is the price dip real and if so do you think it's caused by the credit crunch or by public awareness of cavalier problems since pedigree dogs?
Sins

a bit of both I think. though even before that people were becoming more aware of the heart problems ( a " breeder" we took rescues from said a couple of years ago that they wern't selling as well so they'd moved onto pugs )

Prices seemed to drop straight after the program . a few years ago cavs were quite expensive

I've been thinking the same thing. Prices seem to be lower in our local newspaper ads. I commented to my husband that maybe these bybs will find out that it isn't that lucrative anymore to sell "purebred" dogs because fewer people have extra cash on hand to impulse purchase a dog. Hopefully that will be one positive to the negative economy. Of course what these people will do with their breeding stock is entirely another question. Maybe more will come into rescue.

There seem to be a lot of ex-breeding bitches coming into rescue at the moment (see the Many Tears site, for example); somone said on another forum I belong to that a lot of puppy farms are giving up Cavaliers because 'designer breeds' like labradoodles and cockapoos now sell better. So perhaps they're selling off their existing stock cheap to get rid of them and make way for the crossbreeds. Good news in the long term for Cavaliers, but bad news for the others!

I was VERY tempted by a 3-year-old ex-breeding bitch on Many Tears - but I need to see what the madness on the stock exchange has done to my personal pension pot before I commit to a second Cavalier.

Kate and Oliver

Not just the pups - lots and lots of ex breeding bitches flooding into rescues and freeads.

I'm going to have to stop looking at threads about them, cos I physically cannot do anything to help.

I went to the annual "Puppy Party" at our breeder's house on Saturday, and she said that she has lowered the price of her Cavaliers--"not a lot, but a little," she said. I'm not sure what that means, but her pups were quite expensive (between $2000-2500). This was good news to me since we're getting one of her tricolor pups in early January. :rah: She also lowered the price of her Shih Tzu pups from $800 to $550, which to me was a pretty substantial drop. She said that she's doing this because she couldn't in good conscience charge so much in this economy.

I've noticed in our local paper that Cavaliers are varying wildly in price, but of course, many of these breeders are most likely clueless about the breed, if not downright disreputable. I'm sure the general public who isn't knowledgeable about the breed are confused about why some of the Cavaliers are so much more expensive than others. I'm afraid they're going to be tempted to buy some of the really low-priced ones who probably came from heaven knows what conditions. (I made that mistake 9 years ago when we bought our first Cav and really learned my lesson the hard way.)

Lori

I was recently in a store here that had 2 Cavs about 3 mo old. What caught me eye was the marked down price from $800 to $400 each. While I was looking at them, they were both sold. I did take it upon myself to talk to the buyers and told them to ask some questions and not just take them home blindly. They were so in love with the dogs they did not beleive me. They may well wish they had.

Jane, mom to Alex