What sells is type and quality of material, color, shine and last of all decent meets. With experience your meets will get better and better. IMHO it would be no fun starting out trying to make a perfect stone. There is a big difference between what we do at the USFG and commercial cutting. If one watches some of the youtube videos of commercial cutters turning out stone after stone in just a few minutes with inferior equipment than we have with really decent meets one can see what can be done with experience. The main thing a beginner should concentrate on is having fun and doing a few stones. I am still proud of my first stone with crappy meets, scratches and a mediocre shine. I qualified as a Master on this site and have been on the team at the Australian competition but I what I would call a master cutter is some of the commercial cutters that churn out stone after stone everyday quickly. They are truly masters without recognition. Competition cutting is not what I would call fun. I think of it as more of a challenge to see the best you can do.