Saw some GCC in the petstore here in FL for 650!!!! But if I ever add to my flock it will be rescues anyway. Seeing the joy light come back on in their eyes is priceless..
That's absolutely ridiculous, and really odd for Florida...There are more parrot-breeders in Florida than any other state, and the prices in Florida are typically the lowest in the country, so low in-fact that most parrot "Brokers" and many, if not most of the pet/bird shops up in the Northeast/Mid-Atlantic states buy all of their young baby parrots from breeders/shops/aviaries in Florida, as well as other Southern US states, because there are soooo many parrot breeders down south as opposed to anywhere else...Even the prices in CA are much cheaper than in the Northeast/Mid-Atlantic/New England states, as there are very few parrot breeders up here.
I drove 9 hours one-way from PA to outside of Raleigh, NC for my hand-raised, baby Senegal, because there were only 2 places in all of PA, NJ, NY, OH, MD, DE, etc. that had any hand-raised babies, and the cost of the 2 places that had them up here was more than twice what I paid to the private breeder in NC. Kane's breeder and I had this discussion a few times, as he had been a long-time parrot breeder, he and his wife are both teachers in their late 50's and have been breeding a few different species of parrots for decades, and he told me that to be competitive down in the Southern US states, he had to sell his hand-raised, hand-fed, adorable, healthy baby birds at very low prices, and it was very much just a hobby that they loved to do, and that's the only reason they continue to breed any parrots at all, for the love of it, not because they make any profit at all doing so. He was only breeding Senegals, Quakers, and White-Fronted Amazons at that point, and he used to breed Red Bellieds, Jardines, and some other Amazon species. But it's just too expensive down there to do for no profit or even a loss at times due to how many breeders there are...And god help you if you breed any of the "hot" birds right now, like the Conures are right now (Green Cheeks, Suns, etc.), because they are getting to be as low in price as Cockatiels are down there!!!
I'm in Central Pennsylvania, and here the only hand-raised parrots you see being bred AT ALL in all of PA on a regular basis are Green Cheek Conures, Sun Conures, and for whatever reason I see a lot of Love Birds...That's it. And there aren't many of those to begin with...And even so, the average price of a hand-raised, hand-fed, baby Green Cheek Conure up here, regardless of the mutation, is around $300. I'd say the spread goes from $225-$400 from Private Breeders...Now Petco has been selling what they call "Hand-Fed" Green Cheeks for $449, and Suns for $649!!! And the Petco here usually has both their "Hand-Fed" Green Cheeks and Suns for months and months before they either lower the price (which they do after a bird has been there for 6 months), or if a year goes by and they have reduce the price and they still have a bird, which is no longer a baby anymore, they simply send it to another Petco store, and they put it out for sale back at the original retail price they are when they're young! It's ridiculous...And when Petco says "Hand-Fed", they don't at all mean "Hand-Raised" or even just "handled", they mean "Tube-Fed" on an assembly line...
****That all being said, from my observations over the last couple of years from PA, the average prices on hand-raised parrots from Virginia south to Florida, Georgia, and over to Texas, the Southwestern US states, and in all of CA are at least half the cost, if not less, than the average prices from OH east to the coast, south to MD, and north to Maine. It's just an area with very few parrot breeders at all, and those who do breed charge a premium, and most of the pet stores/bird stores, if you are lucky enough to have one near you, as their are few, don't breed their birds in-house, they order them very cheaply from the Southern/Southwest states and from CA, and then charge a premium here (
parrot Brokers "Ana's Parrots" and "Lily's Parrots" are the best example, and the worst 
) ...I see "Ana's Parrots" advertising one not-yet-weaned CAG, one not-yet-weaned Greenwing Macaw, etc. (that's how they do it, they buy one unweaned baby parrot from a Southern breeder for basically nothing, and then they finish weaning them and say that they "hand-raised" the bird, which is BS)...And they ask between $3,000-$4,000 for one of those species...Ridiculous. Half the time they don't even know where the baby was bred, if they can buy it cheaply they take it...They scour Craigslist for baby/young parrots that need "Re-homed"...uck...
Back on-point, if I was looking or ever do look for a larger, more expensive species of parrot, I would probably adopt one from the Rescue I work at, or another Rescue if I was looking for a certain species that we didn't have any of at the time, OR if I decided I wanted a hand-raised baby, I would find one from a private-breeder down south or in the southwest, and pay to have them flown here. I know of a few very reputable, well-known parrot breeders in NC, FL, GA, and southern CA, who constantly post videos of their babies on Youtube at least once or twice a day, they send their customers a daily video of them feeding their babies, the babies playing, and you get to see your actual baby growing-up, developing, Fledging, Weaning, etc. And they all start them on Harness-Training and Flight-Suit training extremely young, while still in the Brooder. And their prices are fantastic, because not only do they have to be competitive in their areas, but because they do this because they love to do it, not for money...That's the way to do it.
