stop it my sides are hurting !, page-2

Maguro61

Can you explain what is going on in the articles referred to in my previous post (provided below):

I acknowledge that the content below is based on auction prices. Is there such a differential between farm gate prices and auction prices?

http://www.reuters.com/news/video?videoId=23821978

Also,

"A gigantic bluefin tuna, weighing in at 512.8 pounds, sold for roughly $176,000 today in an auction in Japan, a sum not seen in nearly a decade. It was Japan?s first tuna auction of the year?amid rapidly declining bluefin stocks?yet it beat out the top price paid last year by 60%, the Times of London reports. The buyers were the same pair of restaurateurs who went in on that fish.


One owns Kyubey, a Michelin-starred restaurant near the auction site in Tokyo, while the other owns a Hong Kong sushi chain. Within hours of the auction, a chef at Kyubey said part of the fish had already been served to diners. The lucky consumer got a bargain, however; the restaurant wrote off the cost of the fish as an ?engimono,"or talisman for new year luck."