The Competition is Insane!

I made it to the Anaheim NARBC show on Sunday, and the amount of Ball Pythons for sale was insane! Everyone and their brother had high-end double and triple gene morphs in the thousand dollar and up range. Sadly, it didn't look like much was moving. I felt bad for Lori from BHB. She had an amazing spread of snakes on her huge table, with absolutely no one around her.

The crowd was pretty sparse. I overheard one dealer mention that the crowds were bigger on Sunday than Saturday, and I thought the crowd while I was there was pretty pathetic... Saturday must've been a ghost town. I'm wondering if it was because they just had a Super Show in Pomona a month prior.

I'm very curious to see how the market will shift in the next few months, and if the prices will hold stable. I actually wanted to take home a female pied, but found the $900-$950 prices for a 2011 a little too steep for me. How do you all feel about the BP market? Are we headed the way of the Cornsnake?

I actually experienced the exact opposite - maybe because of where I live. I went to a small show last month which, for it's size, had a pretty good representation of herps. Snakes, frogs, toads, lizards - lots of stuff. But I went for the BP's, and there were only 3 bigger breeders and maybe 1 or 2 smaller breeders. The BP tables were PACKED with people and I couldn't find much of anything in my price range:(. Supply and demand sucks. :rage:

Edit: I actually posted a question about the upcoming Hamburg, PA show in another forum wondering about prices at that show. I've found much better deals online than I did at the show last month so I wasn't sure if it was actually worth it to travel 2 hours to the show.

I went to a show in St. Louis last month. It was held in the banquet room of a hotel (to give you a approximate room size) and had 30-40 vendors. IT. WAS. PACKED! Me, being a slight agoraphobe, I had to overcome to see all the snakies ;) they had all sorts of snakes, lizards, and rodents. I would say the prices were pretty fair, but I didn't even look at the prices of some of the higher end morphs as I had set in my head what I was going to get.

I'm sure it's not uncommon to find better deals online as you have a larger selection.

I haven't yet gone to the AAE in Wheaton (mostly because of the 3-hr drive each way), but I would assume since it's held every other weekend it would have a slightly smaller crowd.


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I've gone to a smaller reptile expo around here that happens twice a month and it's always packed. Strange that the Anaheim show would be so poorly attended - I've heard it's one of the biggest and best!

Yea Anahiem was pretty slow... not alot of people and not a lot of sales but there was some decent prices and IMO most vendors will hagle a little so there is some good deals out there with some nogotiating... I think a big reason is 1) of course the economy and 2) it seemed alot of breeding and clutches hatching happened really late.

Of course everyone is breeding and selling ball pythons, thats where the $$$$ is. The term "barely breaking even" is a term used by people who don't want to feel like they sold out lol