For the second straight quarter, the average market rate for flower in Colorado is holding firm at $750 per pound, nearly $100 up from Q1 of 2023, but nearly $200 down from its recent high of Q1 in 2022.
The average market rate is the median market price of each category of unprocessed marijuana that is sold or transferred from recreational marijuana cultivators to manufacturing facilities or retail outlets. The rates are used to calculate excise taxes, with the current rates being in effect from January 1, 2024, through March 31, 2024.
While flower prices stayed the same heading into Q1 2024, other categories saw more volatility, including one category that lost more than 85% of its value: the rate for wet whole plants fell from $71 per pound in Q4 2023 to just $10 in Q1 2024 — a loss of $61 per pound compared to the previous all-time low for the category and $220 per pound down from the all-time high in Q2 2018.
Meanwhile trim and flower allocated for extraction continued their teeter-totter pricing of the past year: when trim is up, flower allocated for extraction is down, and vice versa. This quarter, trim jumped to $304 per pound, its highest rate since Q1 2022; flower allocated for extraction fell to $250 per pound, its second-lowest rate in 18 months.
Trim allocated for extraction remained at $30 per pound, the same price as Q4 2023, the all-time low for the category. Trim allocated for extraction is down more than 50% from a year ago, and more than 90% over the past 27 months.
Categories that have a relatively low number of transactions can see greater volatility. For example, the Q1 2024 average market rates are based on Metrc data from September 1, 2023, through November 30, 2023,; during this time, there were 40,163 flower transactions and just 2,300 trim transactions. Trim allocated for extraction accounted for 10,269 transactions, followed by flower allocated for extraction (5,763) and whole wet plants (3,909).