There are several of us here.  My main source of income comes from the 10K images I have online at Stocksy.

Well thats the core of capitalism. Why would you drive a Bentley or Royce, heavy cars, quite ugly in my opinion, bad for environment, swallow gas like crazy and costs 100 times a last model of Renault or VW. Same thing at a restaurant, same thing with clothing and so on.
Perceived value or real value doesn't matter. When someone thinks that he wants , needs something and does not find an alternative of that file somewhere else he might be willing to pay much more.

Now if you only want a green apple on a white background then surely 99.99% of buyers will not be interested in paying higher at agency a or Z.
Stocky curates the collection to command those high prices and although you can find similar images at other agencies , even much chaeper ones, the browsing experience of a Stocksy vs SS or Istock is totally different. Time is money and the style they promote although not unique has lots of images in that niche. Same thing with Arcangel or Trevillion etc.

Quote from: Sean Locke Photography on January 31, 2022, 13:04

There are several of us here.  My main source of income comes from the 10K images I have online at Stocksy.

Thank you. I can see why that is so.

One thing I don't quite understand is why a buyer would pay more for an image at Stocksy when they can get one at microstock prices (albeit possibly not such a good quality image).

Or am I wrong and is it simply a much fairer model for the contributor?

Thank you for your input, Sean and Everest.