Inside the Digital Marketplace Where Rare Plants Sell For $9,000
Since the early days of isolation, the rare plants market has surged, following in the footsteps of the sneaker market with resellers reporting prices jumping from under $100 to hundreds and thousands of dollars, unregulated marketplace scammers, and requiring lots and lots of research. The simple days of bringing a local nursery staple snake plant or ubiquitous fiddle leaf home seem to be over as more people obsess over collecting these scarce breeds.
After losing his mother, Manny Lorras took over the care of her cat and her collection of rare plants. Once a child who begrudgingly tagged along with both parents to flower shows and was given gardening-related chores, Manny found comfort in tending to his newly acquired plant family. “I learned how to rehab these orchids that she had, some snake plants, and more of the traditional houseplants, and I got really into it,” Marry says.
It was a trip to a local plant store near his home in Brooklyn that really threw his interest into overdrive though. “There was this massive plant that was almost five feet tall, had these really bright pink leaves, and I thought it was super cool. I was like, ‘What is this? This is so strange,’” he recalls. “There wasn’t a lot going on, given it was the early days of COVID. I bought it and spent what I thought was a lot of money for a plant at the time: $500.” This turned out to be a variegated plant, which presents multicolored (thus, pink) due to a mutation that results in the absence of chlorophyll.
Admittedly already a little hooked through caring for his mom’s plants, searching for information on this plant and coming up with very little outside of Facebook and Instagram communities not only allowed Manny to see the growing popularity for houseplants at that time, but that there was no home base for it. As obsessions tend to fuel, Manny’s collection grew in tandem with his own knowledge. The thing is, when you’re successfully caring for plants, they grow and take up more space—Manny learned how to propagate, and in the fourth quarter of 2021, he sold $250,000 worth of rare plant clippings. “I couldn’t believe a random individual like myself could sell that type of value with relatively low quantity and in a matter of months,” he adds.
This experience exposed a huge gap in the market to Manny, who is now a senior director of team marketing and business operations with the NBA. After doing all of this through Facebook, Instagram, and Etsy, he realized that none of these platforms were optimized for plants’ needs nor were there any real protections in place for the consumer. After consulting with his nephew, Nick Lorras, who works in paid media at Dow Jones, the pair realized they were onto something groundbreaking.
Together, they set out to launch MonsteraX, the first-ever rare plants marketplace. The editorial arm started in March 2022 with the marketplace and app following in June 2022 and September 2022, respectively. Here are the three most popular plants according to Manny and Nick from MonsteraX.
Anthurium sp. nov “DF”
Rarely found in the U.S., this plant is responsible for the first, third, fourth, fifth, and sixth largest sales on the platform, ranging in price from $6,900 to $9,150.
Variegated Monstera, specifically Mint Types
There have been a total of 28 sales of Mint Variegated Monsteras node cuttings and whole plants that go for anywhere from $500 to $4,500 a piece, totaling over $60,000 in sales.
Various Anthurium Seeds
Transformed into dresses by the clothing brand Loewe, the seeds of Anthurium are very popular on the platform because they can propagate into multiples. One user sold 45 at $110 each over the period of just a few days.
