Swerve is a habitual liar.
He does not test his gear before releasing it, he's lies about the lineage of his gear (GSC), and now he's stealing pictures from other breeders.
If I didn't know better, I would think Matt Riot and Swerve were the same person.
Apparently, the two hate each other. Can't imagine why. . .they're both such upstanding guys.
Another case where I hate the ethics but some of the gear is probably worth investing in.
Personally, I try to avoid doing business with recognized scam artists whenever possible. Its not just to avoid getting scammed, but also to ensure that my money doesn't help keep them in business.
From a practical standpoint as a se-ed consumer, I simply don't see any reason to support scammers either. Nobody has a monopoly on great genetics nowadays, and there are plenty of ethical breeders out there selling absolutely great lines who are upfront about what they have. Some of them are small "up and comers" who can really use the dollar support, too.
If you look at the various seed banks, often you can find the same bud shots used for different strains.
Well, that's an interesting issue. First of all, let me say that no, they don't "all" do it. Some of the breeders are very careful to take all their own pictures, and post them on their respective sites.
If its the SEEDBANK using the same generic picture for multiple lines, that doesn't necessarily reflect on the breeder or the strain in question. That said, though, I'd like to think that breeders are aware of how their beans are being marketed, and if they aren't, they should be. I can tell you that if I were selling beans commercially, I'd be aware if some seedbank were slapping a misleading image on my lines, and I'd make sure to correct that issue.
If a breeder deliberately puts up a stolen image, so far as I am concerned, they go on my "black list". There are several problems there:
If a breeder is stealing someone else's pictures and calling them their own, you can be damn sure they're also lying about other stuff related to their lines, such as yields, potency, flowering times, and maybe even pedigree. Even making simple F1 crosses still takes 6 months time to do the cross then test them properly. If they're too lazy to take pictures of their own lines after breeding them and putting them up for commercial sale, then for sure they're taking shortcuts in the actual breeding process too.
I mean really, how hard it is to take a few decent shots for marketing purposes? There are 20 growers posting images of their plants every day on this website, and most of them aren't trying to make a living selling beans! Its not like this is so difficult; nowadays, you can take excellent quality images using just a cell phone!
If a breeder really needs to put up someone else's picture, that means at BEST that they've never grown own the line they're offering for sale, meaning they expect the buying public to do their line testing for them. At worst it means that after having grown out the lines they're selling, they've decided that the plants in question don't look good enough to be worth taking a picture of!
