Ok, so obviously I was not clear on my comment about conformation 
I did not say nor imply that conformation does not matter. I did however say that a horse of any conformation “can” be successful. I’ve seen some really really scary looking horses out there competing SUCCESSFULLY. Would I go out and purposely track one down with terrible conformation? Of course not. Conformation IS important, but some horses just overcome the odds.
And yes, I could trade Sweets for 5K tomorrow with 1 phone call. The point is, EVERY horse is worth a fortune to SOMEONE. He’s ridden her, and he’s ridden with her and he thinks she is going to be a top 100 mile horse. (probably not since I don’t have a desire to be that competitive.) And FWIW, I had her sold as an unstarted youngster for $3,000 but backed out of the deal at the last minute. For a brief moment in time I wondered what the hell I was going to do with an Arab and thought I should find a nice young warmblood instead. But the point is that whoever thinks the horse is worth the $$$ is going to pay it. As I said, I trim some plain old trail horses that really are nothing special who brought big bucks because they happened to be the right breed, color and personality. ANY sound working horse can bring 20K to the right buyer. They just have to want it bad enough and the horse has to be marketed the right way.
DJB used to put prices up on her site but she doesn’t anymore. She has had many horses listed in the $15-20,000 range that had only completed a couple of 50s and some LDs. And she’s selling them so clearly SOMEBODY is buying them. A horse who stays sound and has great heart rates and recoveries could be somebody’s golden ticket.
But yes from what I have read and heard, it seems most endurance riders select locally available prospects in the cheap to free category. There’s nothing wrong with that, and I think whether a person wants to pay a boatload or nothing, there is room for both.
