The main reason that some are not impressed by "White Widow" is because they grow "White Widow" knockoffs rather than growing the original genetics which was, years back, renamed Black Widow and can only be found from Mr. Nice Seeds.
Try growing the Real McCoy once and then get back to me and let me know how unimpressed you are and how you believe it to be overrated.
Sure the original has been around a while, but it's still better than most of the garbage that has been released by the multitude of pollen chuckers that pawn themselves off as being true professional breeders.
You are the absolutely perfect example of what is wrong with so many growers when it comes to picking what strain or strains to grow. They wrongly assume that each and every year there is a continual improvement in overall potency, and that some new strains have large increases, and that any strain, regardless of how successful it was/is, if it has a little dust on it's name then it cannot be as good as the latest mutt some talentless pollen chucker released.
I would bet my left nut that if someone secretly took a handful of fairly old second and third place Cup winners, not even first place winners, and renamed them with some keen name and re-released them, many growers would go totally Lady Gaga over them and say they are the greatest thing since the invention of fire, or the wheel. What's more, most or all the strains would in fact be better than most of the trash that has been released since their second or third place wins.
It would be a mistake to underestimate a highly famous strain just because it has a little dust on it's name, and it would be an even bigger mistake to put to much faith in some 'new kid on the block' breeder or a 'Wal-Mart level breeder' and their latest Heinz 57 Variety mutt release coming close to being true quality genetics.
Agreeing heartily with all of this, and just to expand, max modern hybrid strain potency has probably been achieved over 20 years ago. (I say "modern hybrid" to contrast with max pure sativa/pure indica landrace potency, which was probably achieved independently in many parts of the globe HUNDREDS of years ago). Strains most definitely are NOT getting more potent every year.
Just in terms of absolute potency, "Williams Wonder" from 1990 (or earlier) is probably as strong as anything from today, and even a good cut of Northern Lights is still better than much of the stuff out there nowadays in terms of potency.
I think the biggest improvements since the 90s are in terms of FLAVOR than in pure potency.
Personally, I don't put much stock in "cannabis cups" since in my opinion they are largely formats designed to market seed companies (and more specifically to hype seed companies that advertise with the contest sponsors) rather than events that truly evaluate strain quality. If you look at the list of winners from the High Times Cannabis Cups from the last twenty years, the same company names come up again and again, and. . .surprise. . .by pure coincidence, they also happen to be big advertisers in the magazine.
Anyway, since this was brought up, as you might have heard, someone did exactly what you suggested above. AK-47, a strain that first placed in a HT Cannabis cup in 1994, just took third place in the recent HT cannabis cup. If you believe that placing in cannabis cups actually says something meaningful about the strains in question (and again, I'm a bit skeptical), then this does say something about the longevity of the old-school genetics.
I'd make a simple first-principles argument. The fact that strains like Skunk #1 and Northern lights
even still exist at all, says something pretty convincing about their quality. If the stuff from today was really head and shoulders above these 20-30+ year old strains, then the older strains would be extinct. . .nobody would be growing them anymore, let alone breeding them or selling the seeds.
On Skunk #1, that strain forms the basis of many, if not most, of today's "super" strains, including the Jack Herer strains, supposedly all the "Cheese" strains, and probably also all the "dog" and "diesel" strains.
Yeah, I think you could do a lot worse for $40.