What's New in the Hobby??

Greetings

In my continued effort to reconnect to the BP community, I've been lurking around for the last couple months. It seems like a lot has changed since I was last super-active on here 2-3 years ago; I've seen lots of stuff about the market dropping off and breeding slowing down, and most of the members here seem to have kinda vanished too....


I guess what I'm looking for is a summary of what's new with the BPs since I was last here (late 2013). I get the feeling that something integral to the hobby changed while I was gone, but I can't put my finger on it. It's giving me a huge sense of foreboding...like when you go visit the town you used to live in and it's almost the same, but not quite

Hope to hear back from y'all,

Meph

This is how I feel as well, I fell out of the hobby for the most part while I was in high school and slowly got back into it over the past few years. I'm very curious to see who responds to this and what they say.

I'm glad I'm not alone on this...

I want to try and get back into things; I just hope I'm not too far removed to reintegrate :P

facebook seems to have syphoned off a lot of the forum traffic :(

Yeah, I took a few months off and it's slowed down a lot just in that amount of time!

Sent from my HTC One M9 using Tapatalk

I really disagree with the bottom dropping out of the market, so to speak. If you're smart about it and achieve a certain size, I think you can still function as a business. I want to get into it but I plan, long term on focusing on more species that just ball pythons.

I can't really say anything for what has changed, since I'm entirely new myself... Just got my first pet snake a bit over a year ago, and my first BP's a few months ago. However, welcome back!

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Originally Posted by Caspian

I can't really say anything for what has changed, since I'm entirely new myself... Just got my first pet snake a bit over a year ago, and my first BP's a few months ago. However, welcome back!

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Thanks, I'm glad to be back. Hopefully I can get reestablished back into the community :)

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Originally Posted by PhoenixGate

I really disagree with the bottom dropping out of the market, so to speak. If you're smart about it and achieve a certain size, I think you can still function as a business. I want to get into it but I plan, long term on focusing on more species that just ball pythons.

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See I've been away so IDK if that's something that's actually happened or not. Last time I was actually useful on this forum Scaleless was all the rage and Coral Glows/Bananas were selling for 10K a piece

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Originally Posted by Mephibosheth1

See I've been away so IDK if that's something that's actually happened or not. Last time I was actually useful on this forum Scaleless was all the rage and Coral Glows/Bananas were selling for 10K a piece

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Scaleless is still all the rage, and the Banana/Coral Glow thing was an anomaly. With the influence of the sex-linked clutches, and it being an incomplete dominant trait, more people than ever were able to pop out Banana/Coral Glow animals very quickly which saturated the market, causing the "free fall" of the prices. Everyone points to that as their reference when they talk about the bottom falling out of the entire BP market. I can understand the bitter taste seeing a morph drop from 5 figures to 3 in 2 years, but that doesn't mean the sky is falling. It was one characteristic of one morph. And, it doesn't take a genius to do some simple math and figure out that people are still profitable even at the price they sell for today.

In regards to the market as a whole: those that were profitable before, are still profitable now if they work to be. Those that were shots in the pan, will always be such. Those that want to succeed in this hobby (to whichever degree they work hard enough for), still have the ability to do so. It'll take more effort than before, but that's to be expected in any business which gains popularity as quickly as this hobby does.

EDIT: Oh yeah! Good to see you back! :rolleye2:

All I know is that since I joined the hobby and the reason I did finally join was the prices coming down to a respectable range.

I was able to pick up a 2 gene Pastel Calico Ball Python for $40. Felt so guilty getting what ended up being a 575 gram Male for that price that I didn't ask for my change from 50.

Old used fish tanks are easily bought for 20 bucks or less and really if you have been in any similar hobby, you should be able to put a tank together just from scraps. I know I was able to put my guys current home together and have everything provisioned for hi full grown adult home just from my fish keeping and gecko stuff.

The bubble burst, plain and simple.

1st to arrive are the greedy people that try to profit

2nd to arrive are those who cut corners to undercut group #2

3rd to arrive are the people that breed out of their homes and sell off snakes in desperation everything they have a bill to pay.

Then guys like me swoop in and "help" that guy pay his rent or his food bill by taking one of his least favorite hold backs to keep as a family pet.

It happens in every hobby...been there, done that many times over.

I've just learned to be late to the party, once everything is proven out and everybody is undercutting each other.

But my family has an awesome pet now and that pet has a good home.

If you're honestly not in it for the profit, you would be happy to know that a snake was taken out of a breeding mill and is now a pet :)

If you we're only ever in it for the money, you'll curse me :p

...Don't worry, I got caught in the same mess with fish keeping. I once was breeding to help cover my costs and that's really all it ever ended up doing, just covering my costs. Because I was constantly growing. It really doesn't hit you till you get that first $1000 hydro bill :p

Luckily when you buy used gear, you can normally sell it for what you paid or more. So I ended up coming out ahead, but not as far ahead as you might think.