We buy a lot of Christmas trees (Update)

SPEAKER_17: This is Planet Money from NPR. Happy holidays everybody. It is that time of year again and if you're still hoping to nab a Christmas tree, well, best of luck, I guess. Coming up, we have a Planet Money Christmas tale in which Robert Smith and Nick Fountain SPEAKER_10: get to the root of what is happening in the Christmas tree market. This episode originally aired in 2020. Stay tuned for an update at the very end. Here's the episode. Christmas tree! Christmas trees! A Christmas tree, yep! Planet Money Christmas tree! The day after Thanksgiving, Nick, you and I participated in a grand American tradition trying to make a buck off a religious holiday. You guys need a Christmas tree? We're good, thanks. Christmas trees! SPEAKER_09: Look at that beauty right there! Planet Money Christmas trees! We had a pickup truck filled with Christmas trees, a few signs on a corner in a fancy Brooklyn neighborhood, and we were ready to make some cash. How much does a six to seven foot Christmas tree go for these years? We're asking for $150. SPEAKER_07: And people are actually paying $150. No, no they are not. Not a single person. That's why we still have a truck full of trees. So are you trying to dupe people into buying two expensive Christmas trees? SPEAKER_18: Is that what's going on? I don't think it's duping. It's seeing what the market will bear. SPEAKER_07: Okay, and the market so far has borne nothing. SPEAKER_07: He was right! We were striking out. What was it? SPEAKER_07: Were our prices too high? SPEAKER_18: Was our sales pitch off? Maybe people couldn't see our fancy podcast microphones. I think we got a customer. SPEAKER_09: We're curious if this is a tree sale or if it's a news program. SPEAKER_07: It is both. Whoa! I know. It's crazy. Amanda and Leo Sidrin and some extended family were headed to the park when they saw our sign. It was just a matter of reeling them in. Are you interested in a tree? SPEAKER_18: Yes, we are interested in a tree. Excellent. We were just discussing how much to charge for them because we have a little... SPEAKER_18: I overheard you say that you think they might be worth $150. SPEAKER_07: Before we put a price on this tree, would you like to hear the story of the tree? Of course. SPEAKER_09: Excellent. Picture, if you will, a farm in the middle of Pennsylvania. SPEAKER_09: Rolling hills, there are cows, there's a beautiful little barn off in the distance. SPEAKER_09: And you're thinking, oh, is this where they grow the Christmas trees? But no, this is where they auction the Christmas trees. SPEAKER_09: All right, ready? Three, two... Crossfade with walking sounds, footsteps in a field. One week ago. All right. Good morning, Mifflinburg. SPEAKER_08: Whoo! Beautiful, beautiful day. SPEAKER_07: Sunrise, 38 degrees. Gonna be warm today, not very Christmasy. SPEAKER_09: Hello and welcome to Planet Money. I'm Robert Smith. And I'm Nick Fountain. We are in Mifflinburg, Pennsylvania. You know, every time I've had a Christmas tree, I somehow pictured it cut down from SPEAKER_07: a snowy forest by a burly lumberjack and it magically appearing on my street corner. SPEAKER_07: But really, there are a bunch of weird, fascinating steps in between that determine exactly how SPEAKER_09: many Christmas trees get sold and how expensive they are. Today on the show, we visit the world's largest auction of Christmas trees, where the yuletide dreams of boys and girls meet the hard reality of supply and demand. We have $1,000 in cash. We have a pickup truck. Anything can happen. SPEAKER_07: This message comes from NPR sponsor American Express Business. The Enhanced Amex Business Gold Card is packed with benefits like four times points that SPEAKER_17: adapt to your top two eligible spending categories every month and up to $150,000 in purchases per year and up to $395 in annual statement credits on eligible purchases at select business merchants. The Amex Business Gold Card, now smarter and more flexible. Terms apply. Learn more at American Express dot com slash business gold card. Let's just take a moment. That is a lot of trees. It's amazing. The Buffalo Valley Auction Center is a big warehouse plopped down in the middle of prime Pennsylvania farmland. The Christmas trees are stacked like firewood in this big quarter mile circle around the SPEAKER_12: building. As far as the eye can see. It looks like an evergreen wall surrounding the property, like it's a medieval castle. Each of the trees is wrapped in twine and piled in mounds the size of a truck. And in front of each mound is a single tree that's unwrapped so you can smell the needles or count the rings or kick the stump, whatever people do here. Good morning. Hey, we're looking for the office for the Courtney's. There are 45,000 Christmas trees here. SPEAKER_07: So many that the auction doesn't take place inside the building. Oh, we have topiary over here. No, the auctioneer is going to move from tree pile to tree pile on the back of a pickup truck. And we hear that auctioneer before we spot him. SPEAKER_09: Neil Courtney is getting ready to haul himself into the back of the auction pickup truck. There's a tiny stool for him in the back. The auction starts in 10 minutes. So we're already talking fast. How long have you done this? I've been on the tree trucks over the years. What's the deal with the little stool? The little stool is where I sit. That is a tiny little stool and you are not a tiny little man. It'll be all right. You have a sense of balance on the back of the truck? I do. Have you ever fallen off? No, the chair is screwed fast. SPEAKER_07: Ah. Gotcha. Neil says this big Christmas tree auction started as a way to make his professional life just a little bit easier. 30 years ago, he was a traveling auctioneer. Farmers would bring him out to their farm to auction off, well, you know, anything they SPEAKER_03: had to sell. SPEAKER_07: And eventually Neil and a bunch of farmers thought, why not build an auction center and cut out all that driving? Centrifed location? Yeah, what if everyone comes to me? And they did it. People said no one will cut trees and bring them. They cut trees and brought them. SPEAKER_09: 30 years ago, Neil sold $3,000 worth of Christmas trees here. Today, he's hoping he's going to auction off $1.3 million worth of needles and branches. SPEAKER_09: But to hit that huge number, everything will have to go perfectly. SPEAKER_04: And Neil has this theory that this year will be the hottest auction in the last 30 years. SPEAKER_09: He can just feel it. With everyone stuck at home during a pandemic, he thinks people are desperate for something cheerful. And Christmas is going to be huge. Christmas is going to be huge. You think people will get more trees, more boughs, more holly? They're going to make Christmas Christmas. Yeah. SPEAKER_04: If this is indeed a banner year for Christmas trees, the market will sense it here first. This is definitely the largest tree for all in the nation. SPEAKER_07: Tree for all. Hundreds of buyers and sellers come together in one spot. The farmers truck in conifers from across Pennsylvania and as far away as Canada and SPEAKER_09: North Carolina. Little trees for apartments that were planted only a few years ago. Big 18-footers for apartment building lobbies. Those take over a decade to grow. And it's not just your classic Frasier firs. We got Frasiers, we got Douglas, we got Turkey's fur, we got canines, we got Con colors, we got Blue Spruce, Serbians, Nordmans, lots of different varieties. SPEAKER_09: I've never heard of most of those varieties. Well you're going to hear the Douglas and the Frasier, the two you hear, the rest are exotics and that's our... We suddenly hear a loud speaker calling for the start of the auction. I guess that means I got to get to work. Check, check. SPEAKER_09: Ooh, that's hot. SPEAKER_07: Neil climbs up into the bed of the pickup and onto the little stool. And the truck drives off along a dirt path towards tree pile number one. Good luck with the driving. SPEAKER_04: I don't know where all the buyers were hiding, but as the truck moves into position, a crowd starts to assemble. Maybe a hundred guys, and they're mostly guys, in hoodies and car hearts. They work at garden centers, hardware stores, some are just planning to set up in a vacant corner lot. And they're all here looking for a good deal. Excuse me. Yes sir. My name's Robert Smith. I position myself next to a man who looks like he spends a lot of time outside. SPEAKER_09: My name is Kerry Knowles. And where do you work, what do you do? SPEAKER_04: Alexandria, Virginia. In the farm market business. That's right outside of Washington, D.C. Kerry has this brick red baseball cap. SPEAKER_07: It's the only one in the crowd. Maybe it's just fashion, maybe it's some sort of auction trick to get the best deal. SPEAKER_07: That's unclear. But what is clear is that everyone will need some sort of edge today. SPEAKER_09: This is going to be a day like nobody's ever seen. How many do you need? Don't need any, but if the right stuff's there, the right money, it could be a thousand, could SPEAKER_07: be two thousand. Check, check. Neil, the auctioneer is ready. His mic is hot. SPEAKER_03: Neil runs through a few more rules, and then… SPEAKER_09: Ladies and gentlemen, let's get this show off the ground. You're on, Harvey. We're going to start here? You're set, you bet. Five twelve foot con collar. Five twelve foot con collar, what do you want to give, what do you want to give, two hundred to go, doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo. SPEAKER_09: Did he just say two hundred dollars a tree? It's not just the first number out of his mouth. It's meant to prime the pump, to anchor expectations. SPEAKER_09: Watch, watch. He's going to quickly drop the price. SPEAKER_03: Fifty dollars, fifty five, fifty five, fifty five, fifty five, fifty five, fifty five, SPEAKER_07: eighty five, ninety five, five, five, five, ninety five, and a hundred, you bought a number. Sold for ninety five dollars a tree, and you can feel a chill go through the crowd. SPEAKER_04: That's about fifteen dollars more than last year. Neil was right. This is going to be a hot year for Christmas trees. A lot of the buyers aren't even bidding yet. SPEAKER_04: Lynn Fama has a garden center in New Jersey. The prices are a little high right now. SPEAKER_19: We're going to wait. SPEAKER_04: Well, I hear if you wait, you might have to pay even more. SPEAKER_05: Then we'll be going home with nothing. After each sale, the auction truck starts up, moves about seven feet down the row, stops SPEAKER_07: in front of the next pile, and the auction starts all over again. SPEAKER_05: Neil can auction off a pile of fifty trees in thirty seconds flat. Kerry with the red hat has been right in the middle of the bidding. I've come to check in. SPEAKER_09: What's it looking like this year? It would be a good year to be a tree farmer and have trees here to sell. SPEAKER_09: They're bringing big money for them. So that means a bad year to be in the retail business? Well, you just got to adjust your figures a little bit. SPEAKER_12: There's not enough to go around for everybody, so you got to get in there and get them. SPEAKER_09: Kerry is already lowering his standards. The very best trees here are graded number one. Kerry was desperate and buying number two grade trees. These are trees that are, you know, misshapen or have a big bald spot on the back. SPEAKER_07: I bought them misfits. You bought a misfit? Yeah, a misfit. Got to give them a home too. SPEAKER_07: Everybody's watched Charlie Brown at Christmas. SPEAKER_09: Washington, D.C., you're getting misfits this year. SPEAKER_03: Good misfits. Check back with me in a little bit. You know, there's something Kerry said that stuck with me. SPEAKER_09: There are not enough trees to go around, which seems incredible with 45,000 trees here. SPEAKER_03: But there's clearly something unusual going on this year beyond just the increased demand during a pandemic. SPEAKER_09: If there's a supply problem, we need to go to the source, to the growers. And it wasn't hard to find them. They were the folks hanging out in the back of the pack with huge smiles on their faces as prices went up and up. These prices are amazing. SPEAKER_03: Even for the misfit trees. My name's Byron Mitchell and this is my wife. Holly Mitchell. And where's your farm? Where do you grow? Gaines, Galton, Pennsylvania area. The Mitchells have about 250 acres of trees, which sounds like a lot. SPEAKER_09: But Byron says, in fact, this year, all across the nation, we are experiencing a critical shortage of Christmas trees. Not because of COVID, but because of the way Christmas trees are grown. Remember how we said that it takes about a decade to grow a decent-sized Christmas tree? SPEAKER_07: The seedlings of this year's shortage were planted 10 years ago. They were planted during the Great Recession. Now, I didn't know about this because at the time I was covering, you know, banks going SPEAKER_02: under. But during those years, the tree farming business also collapsed. SPEAKER_02: Remember how no one was buying real estate and there were all those new homes that were either vacant or foreclosed upon? SPEAKER_09: Well, no one was buying evergreen trees for landscaping. And the farmers who grow those trees, they'd lost this huge revenue stream. And so in desperation, they started to cut the landscaping trees to sell as Christmas trees. SPEAKER_07: That Christmas during the recession, trees flooded the market. Byron remembers the prices plunging. Trees that might usually sell for $24. SPEAKER_09: Here at the auction, $7 apiece. We were losing money. It was just cash flow to keep the business running. The price for trees was so low that during the worst year, 2013, farmers started to give up entirely. They didn't even bother cutting the trees down and shipping them to market. We had fields of trees, literally thousands and thousands. We probably lost somewhere in the realm of 75 to 100,000 trees that we just let grow because we couldn't afford to maintain them any longer. People stopped planting new trees. A lot of tree farms went out of business. SPEAKER_07: Byron estimates half of his fellow tree farmers gave up. The Mitchells only survived because a gas company came in to lease some of their land for fracking. SPEAKER_02: And that's why there are so few farmers here. So few trees up for auction this year. All these years later, these trees that we see today are the miraculous survivors of SPEAKER_09: the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. And to the survivors, go the riches. SPEAKER_02: It gives us hope for the future, the prices that we're seeing today, that we're going to be able to continue. In the springtime, we'll be able to plant seedlings so that way in 10 years, we'll have more trees to keep going. A nationwide shortage of trees. SPEAKER_07: You know when I heard that, I got that feeling. That feeling you get when you're shopping online and you see a little pop-up that says, only three items left at this price. And you start clicking because you lose all your rational thought because you just have SPEAKER_09: to buy it now. You thinking what I'm thinking? We should buy a metric buttload of trees. I mean, if we can get it at a good enough price, we could totally turn a profit in New York. Everything is expensive in New York. We can't not buy them, really. SPEAKER_01: It's weirdly easy to turn from being reporters to auction participants. We walk over to the auctioneer's son, Ben, we fill in a form. He doesn't ask if we know what we're doing or if we have enough money or even if we have SPEAKER_09: a truck. We did come ready, just in case. I got $1,000 cash in my pocket and a small pickup truck. It is the world's smallest pickup truck. No! It has a six-foot bed and a lumber rack. Ben hands us an official piece of paper with our number 1099 written on it in big Sharpie. SPEAKER_07: That is our bidder number. 1099, like the tax form. We plunge into the crowd, gathered behind the auction truck. I'm starting to feel a little desperate. SPEAKER_09: We got a show to fill. By this point, we kind of understand how the auction works. You do not bid on the first price you hear. That's just the teaser number. You do have to be able to do math quickly in your head. The number you hear from the auctioneer is the price per tree. SPEAKER_07: But if you bid and win, you get the whole pile of trees. You all of a sudden own 57 Frasier firs. I spot a pile I like. SPEAKER_09: 40 cute little trees that would fit in my truck and inside tiny New York apartments. And while we're trying to figure out what they're worth, Neil starts auctioning them up. Money, money, money, game. Money, money, game. 50 dollars. SPEAKER_07: Wait until the price drops. 20 bucks. 20 bucks for this thing on that line. SPEAKER_09: Keep going down. Two and a half. SPEAKER_07: 22 and a half. 22 and a half. Put up the auction number. I got 26. I got 26. You got 26. Oh, 26, 27. Somebody's bidding against you. SPEAKER_09: I can't do it. I can't do it. I can't do it. No, no. Oh, wait. 27, 27? No, you bid 26. Talk to me. We missed it by a dollar. We go over to talk to the pro who beat us. Steve Crop of Virginia. SPEAKER_07: You just buy these? Yeah. You just beat me by a dollar. Daggone it. I thought I could get a steal, but then you just swooped in there. No, I started it. I started it. I was at 20. SPEAKER_05: You went up to 26. I'm like, what are you doing? We got to work together. Seriously, let's collude. Yeah, we got to work together. SPEAKER_07: Now, we should be jumping right back in, but Robert is just kind of wandering off muttering, I don't know, about flaws in auction theory. SPEAKER_09: So I know it's capitalism and I know that's the way the market works, right? This is price discovery, but we don't know anything. SPEAKER_09: It's true. We are complete idiots. SPEAKER_09: We're complete idiots. So are those really worth $27? I mean, that guy's willing to pay it, but he had to have something. SPEAKER_06: We bid it up. If we hadn't been here, would they have gone for 2021? What is the price of that tree? The price is what he paid for it, man. You know, I did remember there is a name for this in economics. It's called the winner's curse. By definition, in order to win an auction, you have to bid more than everyone else thinks SPEAKER_07: the object is worth. Throw in a couple of city boys like us and this whole efficient markets thing goes out SPEAKER_09: the window. Also, it's starting to seem like there are other inefficiencies here. We spot the red hat of Kerry Nalls, the guy who sells just outside of Washington, D.C., and ask him how he's doing. Fantastic. I swear I just kicked — yeah, it's been good. Wait a minute, you are smiling. I did not expect that early this morning. You were grim-faced. That's what makes this business so fascinating is that it turns, just spins right out from you. Well, explain to me what happened. What'd you get? Why are you so happy? I must have all been sleeping or something. I came over there with a box of donuts and half the buyers went over there to get them a free donut and I just scooped them up. What did you get? How many? Just a couple of piles. Piles of trees, not a pile of donuts. Kerry, though, has inspired me to think creatively, to just like grab the moment. SPEAKER_07: And I'm thinking, let's go for misfit trees. The number two trees. This is where we brand the Zoom tree. I think like — I don't think anyone's tried this yet. SPEAKER_03: Hear me out here. For a lot of people, their social life now and their work life is on Zoom, right? SPEAKER_03: Sure. And so you want to have a nice background that says like, oh, you know, I'm enjoying the holidays and it doesn't matter if it's a good tree. It just has to look good on Zoom. Right, right, right. Just like nobody's wearing pants anymore, we get a skanky — we get a flawed number two tree and then we just market Zoom trees. SPEAKER_09: We add 20 bucks to it. I'm loving it. Let's do it. Then we spot them. I'm going to sell a number two trees around. 1967 feet. These are hefty trees. You could sell 19 trees in New York. So we're making our stand here. Can you guys who know something about trees tell us how much these are going to go for? Nobody knows. And then it's too late. Neil and his auction truck pulls up. Which one? I make eye contact with Neil. But don't bid yet. OK, we're at $50. Are you in? Are you in, Nick? He finally bids, but he's quickly outmatched. $52.50. OK, he's doing $52. Nick bids $55 a tree and then — I cannot believe I'm seeing this — he bids against himself. And you only get one tree pass a day. SPEAKER_07: $55. $75. $75. $75. $75. $75. $75. $75. $75. $75. $75. $75. $75. SPEAKER_04: $75. $75. SPEAKER_09: Immediately, people start giving us a hard time about the price we paid. SPEAKER_05: But you know what? We don't care. We got trees. We start throwing them in the bed of my pickup. All we have to do now is bring them back to Brooklyn and sell these 19 trees for a profit. SPEAKER_09: When our show continues, after — wait, what? SPEAKER_09: One second, I got to — Nick. SPEAKER_09: The truck is full. Whoa, you've only put in half the trees. SPEAKER_09: Yeah. SPEAKER_04: We have seven trees we can't fit into Nick's tiny truck. That's a decent sized truck. But Nick, ever the hustler, approaches a bunch of guys next to us — Excuse me, sir. No, you're not going to try it. — and goes into salesmen. I bought them for $55. SPEAKER_04: I mean — Which takes you for $55? How about $50? SPEAKER_07: It's worth it to me. Okay, come on. Wait, did we just lose money already? I got cash in my pocket. We just lost seven times five. SPEAKER_09: $35. SPEAKER_09: Okay, Nick, now are we ready? You just got to tie them down. And head for the big city after the break. Hey, it's Erika Barris. Before we get back to the show, a bit of year-end reflection. SPEAKER_07: SPEAKER_09: In 2023, Planet Money followed the wild arc of inflation of interest rates. SPEAKER_07: We brought you a series about AI and an episode produced by AI. And we served up another extremely infotaining season of Planet Money Summer School. SPEAKER_09: Of course, we have big plans for lots more cool stuff like that in 2024. But that stuff will not be possible without your help. SPEAKER_17: This is where we want to say a big thank you to our Planet Money Plus supporters and anyone listening who already donates to public media. And to anyone out there who isn't a supporter yet, right now is the time to get behind the NPR network, especially with the big election year coming up. So please, join NPR Plus at plus.npr.org. SPEAKER_00: Or make a tax-deductible donation now at donate.npr.org. And thanks. SPEAKER_17: Well, now that you've heard the story. And so that brings us back to the day after Thanksgiving. A street corner in Park Slope, Brooklyn. The Sidron family listening to our every word captivated by the story of why the Great Recession means they should pay $150 for a tree that we bought for $55. But the nice thing is, if someone were to see your tree, maybe in the background of a Zoom call or perhaps a visit, you could just say to them, hey, do you have 20 minutes? Because you could listen to an entire episode about this exact tree. I mean, that's just... SPEAKER_15: Well, that does make it more valuable. Yeah, definitely. It could make it more valuable because obviously the story has currency. SPEAKER_13: I mean, that's what you're selling us is a story. And a Christmas tree. Don't forget, we'll also sell you a Christmas tree. SPEAKER_15: We pulled the top tree off the pile, unwrap it, and honestly, it is not that bad. It's time to haggle. SPEAKER_14: And immediately we realized that because we told the Sidron family the story of the tree, we have lost a lot of our negotiating power. We don't need to hear the show to know that these are second rate trees, but frankly, there's no other trees out right now. There's a lot of demand in Brooklyn for trees this year. What did they say they paid? They told us. They told us, but if we roll back the tape, they're going to tell us what they paid. There's all sorts of extra costs. The gas, I got a rental car, two hotel rooms. I bought loppers and a saw. I paid to park the truck in a garage because we didn't want the trees stolen. Brooklyn, meals, taxes, New Jersey tolls. But Leo Sidron is not buying it. He lobs a lowball offer. The standard $10 per foot, that's the going rate around here. I'm going to say 70 bucks for this tree. Oh no, no, no, no, no, no. SPEAKER_14: Well what do you think? I mean, I think, I guess I would say $100. I will take $100 for this tree. Sold. Sold. Wait, he's shaking his head. SPEAKER_09: He's shaking his head. He was trying to do a negotiation. I was going to say a hundred times. It's our first sale. And our only sale for a really long time. SPEAKER_07: Yeah, we stood there for hours and we tried every trick. We told the story of the miraculous recession tree at least a dozen times. No one was impressed. Four hours later, as the sun was starting to set, we had only sold the one tree. And so we got desperate. SPEAKER_09: We drove around Brooklyn with a cowbell. Christmas trees! Christmas! Which actually got a few sales. Christmas trees! We also sold one to Robert's wife, to his neighbor. I sold two to my neighbors. And then we just started to show up at our NPR colleagues' apartments, forcing them to buy a tree for the sake of the podcast. SPEAKER_19: Stacey Vanixpeth. Robert Smith. How's it going? How's the Christmas tree business? How well could it be going if we're selling it to our coworkers at this point? SPEAKER_07: Jacob Colstein. SPEAKER_09: We've come to sell you a tree. SPEAKER_06: 35. SPEAKER_09: Come on. I'll give you 60 bucks. Aww. That's what Stacey paid. SPEAKER_07: She didn't even question it. She wanted to pay more. Well, maybe it's worth more to her. Nick, I know you made a spreadsheet of our profits and loss. Here it is. SPEAKER_19: With taxes, we paid $1,107.70 for the trees. SPEAKER_11: And we sold all 19 of them for a grand total of $1,105. SPEAKER_19: That is a loss of $2.70. SPEAKER_19: Before expenses. Yes, there is that. SPEAKER_09: So for the sake of accounting, I'm going to book all of the expenses into the cost of SPEAKER_07: the podcast part of the venture. We'll call it Goodwill. And so basically we're even. That is some creative accounting. Not going to lie. Having home that night, we were a little depressed. But later in the evening, one of our customers sent us a photo. Our tree was set up in their living room with sparkling lights and a little Santa on top. SPEAKER_19: And you know, it did not look like a misfit. SPEAKER_16: It didn't look like a number two tree. It looked like the Christmas tree of my childhood memories. SPEAKER_07: And that family who paid $100 for their tree, Leo, Amanda, Sol, Zelda, they went home and SPEAKER_07: believe it or not, recorded this song about the experience. SPEAKER_07: Leo Sidrin, the dad, he's a composer. SPEAKER_08: That was Robert Smith and Nick Fountain from Christmas of 2020. SPEAKER_09: SPEAKER_09: And since then, we have in fact kept in touch with our friend Neil Courtney at the Buffalo SPEAKER_09: Valley Produce Auction to periodically check in on the state of the Christmas tree market. SPEAKER_07: And you know, this year when we called up Neil, we had to, of course, talk about the one big economic force that has changed since we first met him back in 2020. Inflation. Who knows what the right price is? SPEAKER_09: Inflation hit the world of everything. SPEAKER_09: We're living in a wild economy. Sugar costs, fertilizer, saws, all those inputs to the Christmas tree growing process are more expensive than they used to be. But Neil told us for the most part, that stuff hasn't really been passed on to consumers, SPEAKER_07: except at the very high end of the tree market. SPEAKER_09: Your super fancy luxury trees. Once again, the real story here is about the supply of Christmas trees. The last few years, tree growers have been essentially borrowing from Christmas's future, cutting down trees they might otherwise have let grow. This year, after years of new planting, supply is finally starting to catch up with demand SPEAKER_07: again and Neil managed to have a record year in 2023. It was great. This sale was our biggest sale ever, just by a little bit. Less work, more money. SPEAKER_16: We actually sold 5,000 less trees than last year and grossed a crazy amount more money. And while that might make you think that that means the Christmas trees you and I buy have gone up in price, that doesn't seem to be the case. SPEAKER_11: Neil told us that all these gains came from soaring prices on a different category of Christmas tree. The really, really big ones, 10 footers or bigger that you might see in the lobby of a big office building. Those take longer to grow, so the supply of tall, tall trees hasn't come all the way back yet. And while in the past seven or eight years, Christmas trees have gotten more expensive, Neil says he thinks the market trend has finally begun to flatten out. SPEAKER_10: I believe the Christmas tree market's going to stay on even keel now for a little while. Some of the retailers this year are saying their sales are off a little bit, but we're hoping that we come back even stronger next year. Neil's impression is that the average price of a Christmas tree will hover around the same price as last year, somewhere around 80 bucks. Sapp is running. And we bought it from the boys at Planet Money. We always want to hear your stories. SPEAKER_10: You can email us at planetmoney at npr.org or you can find us on social media at Planet SPEAKER_10: Money. Today's show was originally produced by James Snead with help from Gilly Moon. It was edited by Bryant Erstad. Alex Goldmark is Planet Money's executive producer. Special thanks to Matt Harsh for inspiring this episode and to Nick Fountain's father for use of his regular sized truck. I'm Kenny Malone. This is NPR. Thanks for listening. 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