How well do higher end morphs sell?

[luckylukey]

Hello! I'm just starting out with breeding, and I've been thinking about getting into a small project involving Pie, Clown and Albino. I live in Europe and I'd only be doing handover at Hamm or local pick-up. I'm looking at the prices on Morphmarket and for example Clown Pies are going listed for around 1-1,5k, is there anyone actually willing to buy animals for that price? Or would I just get stuck with the babies?

And if I managed to get a full gene Clown Piebald Albino animal, is there any chance I'd be able to sell it for what others have gone for on Morphmarket? Does anyone have an idea of what one might go for in a couple years(say 2026)?

I'd love to work with these genes, but don't want to end up with a bunch of unsold babies.

Any thoughts would be helpful. Thanks!

[Lord Sorril]

You don't see too many triple gene recessive ball pythons around because the statistical odds of producing one are low.
The higher end ball pythons are easier to sell because there is less availability.
More attractive looking snakes can command more money purely on aesthetics.

Along the way of producing recessives-normally you also produce a significant number of Heterozygous specimens.
People don't want to buy Hets or Possible Hets from a breeder that is not well-known...they are taking a risk spending the time/energy to raise a snake that may not have the genes they want.

If you are just starting out breeding and your collection is aligned to have a high chance of producing triple recessives by 2026--then I imagine you would have spent enough money on your original breeders to make the cost vs. gains ratio questionable at best-even if you sell one for thousands of dollars.

Anyhow, my two cents...

[Armiyana]

I honestly have no idea how the market is in the UK.
In the US it's oversaturated and unless you're a big name breeder or selling at a huge cut you may get stuck with them for a bit.

Another factor is how you're looking to produce them.
2026 isn't very far...and plans don't always work out. If you purchase a hatchling female now she still may not be guaranteed to go. Or adult females can skip. I have 2 large adult girls I picked up last year...neither of them produced any eggs last year or this year. One of them I was really looking forward to as well. She reabsorbed.

If you're producing a lot of triple hets or single gene recessive double hets it can be tough. If you can guarantee double recessives with the last het that's much easier to place I would think.

But you never know.... I recently sold a simple bumblebee in a week buy listing her 40% cheaper than most. So trying to hit that money goal may be tough.

Do it because you love it and it's much easier. Money makes it tough.

[Bogertophis]

.....Do it because you love it and it's much easier. Money makes it tough.

[nikkubus]

I also don't know much about the market in Europe vs in the US, but I can't imagine is drastically different. The more expensive the animal, the less people can afford said animal, and you might be holding on to it a little bit longer, but 1-2k isn't at the extreme end it should eventually sell. A 5-10k animal you could sit on for years waiting for just the right customer that can afford it and wants it. The opposite end of the spectrum, you are going to produce a lot of normal looking hets trying to produce a triple recessive, and those are near impossible to sell here.

Even if all those animals are super easy to sell, you need to think about if this is really a project you want to deal with as a new breeder, because it isn't always cost effective when you have to feed a bunch of hets long enough they are stable to be sold or even longer to breed them as holdbacks. It could take a decade of breeding to hit just one triple recessive depending on what your starting animals are. You could start with a pretty expensive pair and produce a lot more of the high end animals, but the second you try to add other morphs in to make the project exciting again, you have to deal with these crazy odds all over again! A project like this needs to be really well thought out and planned for. Once you accomplish triple recessives being reliably bred from one of your pairs, say you want to add YB or Enchi in there to make the yellows and oranges better, back to dealing with really difficult odds. It's better to get a variety of incomplete dominants in there from the beginning so that you have some kind of variety and the hatchlings that don't hit the goal still have something appealing to buy.

I'd say take a look at some of Kinova's projects and how when Justin is doing them, he's got a lot of alternate goals in these projects so that it stays interesting. He experiments with different combos to see which end up really carrying a project by making combos that are shining examples of the morphs he deals with. That is how he stays so relevant.

I've been breeding off and on for decades and still haven't braved even a double recessive project in BPs. It's a huge time and money investment. I've worked with double, triple, quadruple, quintuple recessive projects in corn snakes, but only because I was able to start with animals that helped me produce great visual combos right off the bat (it's a lot cheaper to say get a triple recessive het 4th recessive corn snake than it is to get even a single recessive visual BP most of the time, though BP recessive costs are dropping rapidly). Price drop is another thing you need to take into account. If it takes you a decade to hit visual triple, they probably won't cost nearly that much by the time you pull it off because they will slowly become more and more saturated in the market. When I started breeding, Pieds (nothing else in a combo) cost about $1500 here. You can pick one up for under $100 now.