Snowmass are a legend in the alpaca business. Snowmass Alpacas is located on a beautiful 400-acre ranch in Sandpoint, which is in the Northern Panhandle of Idaho, just 90 minutes from Spokane, Washington. This is the home of the Skinner family --- Julie and Don, and four young children, Nicholas, Maree, David James and Heidi --- and home to more than 150 alpacas, (as well as cattle, horses and various other livestock).





The Snowmass Alpacas Making of Champions Private Selection Sale is held on a ranch just outside Phoenix Arizona. So this event is an opportunity for many breeders to enjoy some sunshine and relax in the company of fellow breeders.



The Snowmass alpaca auction had 67 lots. Friday and Saturday were spent looking at and examining the alpacas and listening to the guest speakers.



The auction itself started at 4pm on Saturday and lasted the best part of four hours.

These events are really interesting and the "usual suspects" were in attendance to bid for the high value alpacas. These families are all on first name terms with each other and the auctioneers. But there are plenty of other medium and small farms looking for a bargain. In total I would say there were well over 300 alpaca people there for the two days.

Prices were very unpredictable in my humble opinion. Some alpacas went for way more than I expected and others looked like bargains.

The star of the show was Snowmass Legacy Gold which sold for $500,000.



Snowmass Sabrina a grand daughter of one of our female alpacas Peruvian Navidad sold for $33,000 which was kind of interesting.

A couple of the successful bidders were new to the industry and buying their first animals...talk about in at the deep end...

One of the bargains of the night was Snowmass Perfection a lovely male that was a "steal" at $155,000 and promptly snapped up by our good friends Al Cousill and Jude Andersen from Pucara International.

The surprise of the night was a ten year old female called 6Peruvian Hallmark who went for a new world record figure of $305,000.




Meanwhile a lovely looking rose grey boy with super fine fleece went for $27,000.....


At the end of the evening the sale had grossed about $3.96 million which is a great deal of money in anyone's language.

Thanks go to the hosts Don and Julie Skinner for a very informative and enjoyable two days. Sorry I came home empty handed Julie...maybe next year!



Adrian Stewart