Pied-$$??

Packaging up a Super Pastel or Bumble Bee is a bridge I don't really want to cross. But when the check clears, I'll just have to re-invest and do it all over again:P. LOL

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Originally Posted by Adam_Wysocki

He'll be the guy in Daytona naked and passed out in a shopping cart in the lobby of the Hilton the Saturday morning before the show. ;)

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LOL. Who else here thinks "The Adventures of Jimmy" would make a cool comic strip? Or maybe an action movie starring Harrison Ford as the breeder trying to save the Ball Python industry and Ashton Kutcher as the evil Jimmy. Couldn't be any worse than Snakes on a Plane. :P

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Originally Posted by xdeus

LOL. Who else here thinks "The Adventures of Jimmy" would make a cool comic strip? Or maybe an action movie starring Harrison Ford as the breeder trying to save the Ball Python industry and Ashton Kutcher as the evil Jimmy. Couldn't be any worse than Snakes on a Plane. :P

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LOL...if Hollywood tried to do something like that, all the ball pythons would be 20 feet long...have fangs...and rattles on their tails! :O :P

Run away!!!! That just reminds me, I happened to turn the channel and came across Alexander. Angelina Jolie was holding a Ball Python and she said to the kid, grab it quickly or it will strike. Umm yeah...How about ball up and hide?

I'm just glad my name is not Jimmy :fishslap:

Great read and very helpful to beginners like me! Thank you to all the contributed!

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Originally Posted by jglass38

Run away!!!! That just reminds me, I happened to turn the channel and came across Alexander. Angelina Jolie was holding a Ball Python and she said to the kid, grab it quickly or it will strike. Umm yeah...How about ball up and hide?

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Lol...

"Gaaah! I'm run into a nest of merciless ball pythons...few men have been known to escape their cuteness! Run for the hills!"

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Originally Posted by Adam_Wysocki

As Jimmy grows his collection and the care of the animals takes more and more time, feeder bills grow, the money starts becoming too much to hide from the IRS, one of two things will happen ... either the quality of Jimmys product will go down, or Jimmy will realize that in order to make the same money he was making when he started he'll have to charge more.

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He may have to charge more, or he may just have to become more efficient. Often there are a few different levels of cost.... certain costs are low when you are small, and then they go up as you begin to hire employees, business licesnses, warehouse, but then there has to be a point where you get big enough that the average cost per snake is as low or lower than when Jimmy first started in his parents basement.

If you add up all the costs of raising and feeding and housing and taking care of 1.5 albino BP's, and then divide that cost into the 30 babies that hatch out the first year, how much can that actually be? (Im asking, I have no clue)


30 babies that he wanted to sell for $1000 each....

Food for 6 snakes for 1 year (assuming he bought the females of size to be ready in a year) $400 ? Housing for 6 snakes? $1000, Heat, care? Lets say he paid someone to clean and feed them once a week, 2 hours, $20 so $1000 in a year,

so thats $2400, divided by 30 babies... around $80 each

and lets add on another 4,000 in costs just because i have no clue :)

so $210 each the first year, and less the second year as housing has already been purchased...

Even if that cost doubled, he would only have to raise the cost to $1200 per baby to be making the same amount.


It is somewhat tricky for someone like me to think about, mostly because I see most morphs being similar in cost to raise as the rest, and yet extremely varying values placed on them based on the market/supply, etc...

If the above situation was applied to pastels.... ouch $210 in costs, for a pastel that someone wants to sell for $400? That cuts the profit margin to the bone.... but if they were to sell it at $1200, that gives more breathing room.....


I think in the end the demand for albinos will mean that Jimmy's 30 snakes at $1000 get snapped up faster than you can blink.... or even better, in this case I would almost guarantee that a bigger breeder, or wholesaler would snap these up, and sell them at market price as Adam said... and after those 30 are gone, there are still probably another few hundred people who will then turn to the market priced snakes and buy those.

Wow, that's a lot of typing in one day.


I think focusing on trying to keep the prices as high as possible for as long as possible isn't the right focus.

Let's go back to the home entertainment scenario. Sony sold Plasmas for $15K. Now plasmas are cheap. But Sony still sells products for $15K - newer, better products.

You see, as has been pointed out, it's inevitable that the market will reach a point where supply is greater than demand. Albinos at PetCo for under $100 is coming.

So, what does Sony do that snake breeders also need to keep doing to continue making top dollar? Development of new product.

I'm more keen on front projection home theater, so I'll use that as an example.

Way back when, somebody decided an 800X600 LCD projector would be a great way to watch movies and TV. But at the time, LCD projectors weren't that great for home theater. LCDs were prone to non-uniform color, horrendous contrast, and a screen door effect that would leave you seeing little boxes for hours.

And so somebody focused on making a LCD projector geared towards the home theater market. And so then we had LCD projectors with S-Video inputs, and brightness that was more geared towards a home theater environment.

Then Texas Instruments came along and invented the Digital Light Processor chip (DLP). DLP projectors came along at top dollar, and won buyers with it's superior contrast and less screen door than LCD projectors.

So in response, better LCD panels are made, projectors start coming with component inputs, and higher resolutions such as 1024x768 are made. The older LCD prices drop because there's a lot and they're old news.

DLP continues to improve their product also with faster color wheel speeds and better contrast. DVDs make wide screen popular, and 16:9 854x480 8units are produced. Finally, high definition 1280x720 units are released for top dollar.

Sony comes out with the first 1920x1080 full high definition projector, and prices it at $30,000

LCD also improves, having better color than DLP. Panasonic releases a 1280x720 high definition front projector for $2000 less than the cheapest DLP, as LCD is a cheaper technology to produce.

In the meantime, 3-chip DLP projectors that have superior brightness, contrast, and color reproduction compared to everything else are out for $20,000+

Recently, a $3000 single chip DLP projector was released to compete with the low priced LCD 1280x720 projectors. Also, 1920x1080 front projection has broken the $10,000 barrier.

The future of front projection is in the form of higher contrast and brighter pictures. New technologies for light engines to replace the $400 bulbs. And resolutions even higher than 1920x1080 (already available) for large venue theaters. And eventually those will be available for home theater, and the 1920x1080 projectors will be selling for $2000. But there will be better brighter higher contrast projectors still priced above $10K for those willing to pay the premium.


So that's great! What's the point?

The point is that instead of fighting the losing battle of keeping prices high as long as possible, focus on making tomorrow's Ball Python! Currently the holy grail seems to be the pure white snake wich I've seen for sale for over $100K. How about other colors? Eventually there will be enough breeding that anybody who wants a pure white ball python can have one for under $1K. But by that time, the breeders who have stayed focused on the future will have other colors. Ball Pythons disguised as Corn Snakes. Pure Purple? Blood Red? Cool Blue? That's where the money lies.

The only companies I know of that keeps prices high selling the same old product is the oil companies. Everybody else has to "build the better mouse trap" to continue to make sales. Intel would be out of business today if they attempted to market the 486SX at a high price point while everybody else passed them by. Nope, Intel put money into research and development to make better faster processors.

So, wile it's important to sell your product at the highest price you can, the focus is to make money in the future. Keeping prices high as long as possible is short term. Having a morph that nobody else has is long term.What morphs will you have when albinos go a dime a dozen?




To answer the original question, yes, prices will creep down as the supply/demand ratio approaches equillibrium. But it probably won't happen overnight or over year, but over the course of several years.

And a honest question - out of all the people who buy morphs, what percentage is breeders? I'm sure there are some people out there who buy a morph just because they have a lot of money, and they think it looks cool, but to read these forums it would seem the only people buying morphs are breeders who are in this for the money, not because they think a yellow snake with purple polk-a-dots is worrth $50,000 just to keep as a pet.

Petco lists $8 male imported CH for $80, for them to be selling albinos for $100 it would mean that they were getting them for $20 or under.


What kind of time frame were you thinking of?

on the flip side, you want your investment to be worth something for several years. if they drop or crash too fast, it will take you longer to turn a profit. if it takes you 3-4 yrs to have babies for sale, i don't want to dump my babies at petco for 50 bucks a piece. if we work to keep investments yielding higher longer this helps everyone. if balls drop too fast, that would make investing in them more risky? who would want to spend 1k to sell babies for 50 bucks? to come up with a new marketable morph takes $$$ and time to prove out.



vaughn