Pastel question

My friend was at the store and they have a pastel for $185. She asked the sex and they said they would sex it for her if she was serious about a purchase. She took a picture and sent it to me so I am posting it here. As she is new to the world of ball python morphs she isn't sure if the price is fair for a ball python of this quality and lets assume its female. So would $185 be a fair price for an 09 female pastel that looks like this? (If its male I'm going to tell her to forget about it because that would just be too expensive for a male)

http://i144.photobucket.com/albums/r...ake/pastel.jpg

If it is indeed female then the price isnt TOO bad. It has a really nice reduced pattern going on there!

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Originally Posted by Jay_Bunny

My friend was at the store and they have a pastel for $185. She asked the sex and they said they would sex it for her if she was serious about a purchase. She took a picture and sent it to me so I am posting it here. As she is new to the world of ball python morphs she isn't sure if the price is fair for a ball python of this quality and lets assume its female. So would $185 be a fair price for an 09 female pastel that looks like this? (If its male I'm going to tell her to forget about it because that would just be too expensive for a male)

http://i144.photobucket.com/albums/r...ake/pastel.jpg

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Without knowing the sex its hard to say.If its a female then yes if male heck no :P

And one more question. She is wondering what the price is for a nice axanthic female and a female pewter is.

They are both going to be in the 800 - 1200 range depending on quality and which breeder.

Was it a local pet store where she found it? I would think most breeders selling to pet stores (or pet store suppliers) would be selling mostly males. These snakes must be sold at a cheap, wholesale price to allow room for "reasonable" (yea right) markups for the retail store. Female pastels, and morphs in general, are just worth too much to sell that cheap.

You have to figure that a normal ball python that you can get for $20-$25 at a reptile show will sell for $60-$90 at a retail pet store. Most retail stores have significant markups. I would think for a pet store to have purchased a female pastel at even a good deal, they would definitely mark it up above $185.

I see this as I work at a pet store, and we can ALWAYS get normal ball pythons for cheap, but occasionally our supplier will have a baby morph available. They are almost always males, and the wholesale price is still not cheap. Most breeders, I would think, are going to keep their valuable female morphs to sell at a higher price than they would be able to sell to a retail distributor or store.

Unless someone who all ready owned the snake just decided they didn't want anything to do with it anymore and gave it to the pet store, I would think chances are it's a male.

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Originally Posted by Jay_Bunny

And one more question. She is wondering what the price is for a nice axanthic female and a female pewter is.

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I have seen axanthic females around 650 and up.