To me the basis of this thread really points out part of how and why so many people make errors in their choices of strains.
The premise is what is the best of the best of the newest crop, no pun intended, of genetics. For that to really matter one has to assume that either the person who really cares about newest believes that each year things actually get better or that they have tried everything from the past and so there is now only the new left to search through.
If not one of those things all the newest and latest and greatest flavor of the month crap is just that …. crap ……. as are many of the newest and latest and greatest flavor of the month strains so often times are if compared to some strains of the past.
I am not saying all or even most older strains are true gems, but some are and some are far better choices to make than some fad-strain everyone is whipped up over or the rely on the opinion of people where in many cases they have rather limited experience/length of time growing, and who have very little to use as an accurate comparative for judging something by.
It is wise to not place all that much stock in awards won, at least not those in the fairly recent past, since there have been questions of things possibly not having been totally on the up and up and there is some question of if a winner or two actually deserved to win. You can’t go all Lady Gaga over something because it won an award.
Now if in the following year or so it sells like hotcakes, everyone praises it and breeders left and right have cranked out their own knockoff version, well you can pretty safely guess it stood the marijuana world on its ear and that it deserved to win and is not much of a gamble to purchase it as long as its genetics are at least generally of the type you like.
I don’t have any problem being a bit farther back in the genetics wagon train than some. I let others be the lab-rats and do the testing and let them be the ones to be disappointed. In a way I do what Custer should have done, send out scouts.
Most times I pick something, it has a proven track record to rely on and that can’t be found on what was just released yesterday. I do experiment a little now and then, one or two individually purchased bean of some strains, but even then normally it is of some blast from the past more often than the flavor of the month.
I just think you are more apt to find a real gem looking through the massive number of strains that already exist than of finding one in what will always be a fairly limited number of new release top of the pops, top 40 countdown hit releases each year. Some new gem will eventually come along now and then but while you wait and search there are already a whole bunch that are already out there waiting for you to try. They exist now and the other is really just a will there be or not be a gem in the new crop of strains this year?
To me the approach to strain choice some make is sort of like stepping over a dollar to pick up a penny since so many flavor of the month strains turn out to be a bust in the end. There is something of known value right there but they go for the other, the one that many turns out to be of much less value.
There are many strains that are really very good strains, very high quality strains, that many growers have never or hardly heard of and if they have hear of them they have some preconception about the strain or breeder that keeps them from considering it/them. A lot of real goodies are missed that way and some of what I call ‘value strains’ are also missed that way.
It is a matter of numbers. There are way more strains of the past to pick from than from any current year so unless someone has tried all the older strains still available and want something different or they have fallen for the myth that each year on average/overall strains get better and better your chances of finding a gem are better looking into the past.
As for where to find seedbanks and ratings for them:
http://www.seedbankupdate.com/su.html
If you stick to one of the seedbanks with the higher ratings you will most likely be satisfied with your purchase.
