Whats the deal with prices?

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Originally Posted by mattchibi

You could breed a Queen Bee with a Lesser Pastel and get a clutch full of normals. Or you could get a clutch full of killer queen bees. Just saying its possible and all depends on the odds. Ball python breeding shouldnt be about the money. sure making your investment back is always nice and being able to fund your breeding projects with the returns youre getting from sales is nice as well, but youre right, if youre trying to make a quick buck, dont choose to breed ball pythons. Its a long and expensive process and you won't see any returns for 3 or 4 years.

To try and answer your question, you need to choose what morphs and outcomes you want to breed wisely. If you are trying to make your return back in the first few years, breeding two recessives to make double hets would not be a good idea at all because a) people would be hesitant to buy double hets from someone who isnt known, b) double hets would be harder to sell than codom or dominant mixed morphs. The only reason you would make double hets is to try and produce a visual form of two combined recessive genes. The longer a process takes for a snake to be made, the more expensive it will be.

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Yes, morphs still carry normal genes.Oh and the odds of missing anything on a queenbee to a lesser pastel are slim. Not that it cant happen but very unlikely. And trust me I know this isnt about making money, considering mine havnt made me a dime and do nothing but cost me money.

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Originally Posted by West Coast Jungle

You obviously haven't bred ball pythons very long. There is a lot more to it then getting two morphs and breeding them together. Realistically you spend 3-5 years on a project and when you finally hit the odds:bow: trust me you wont think the price is high. At the end off the day its like rolling the dice in Vegas and that is if you get eggs. I remember one season Graziani had 100 females that didn't go!

It took me 19 eggs from 3 different clutches to hit on a bumble bee that should have been 1 in 4 odds. That of course doesn't count the females that never even produced eggs.

You mentioned the BEL and Super Enchi, to breed them together you would have had to have bought them both several years ago when the price for either one of them would cost you way more than the combo you produced today and then someone will ask you why is it so much??

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No your right I havnt bred very long or at all for that matter but Im not necessarily a noob either. I have had snakes for a long time but I just started trying last year to breed them and yes this is going on the fourth year. I was just using 2 supers as an example I wasnt talking a real situation. It just seems like everyone is always hitting on something and their is no shortage on the more popular combos so someone's hitting the odds. And that is crazy, 100 females and no go. Doesnt make me feel too good about my odds this year, lol, thanks.

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Originally Posted by West Coast Jungle

You obviously haven't bred ball pythons very long. There is a lot more to it then getting two morphs and breeding them together. Realistically you spend 3-5 years on a project and when you finally hit the odds:bow: trust me you wont think the price is high. At the end off the day its like rolling the dice in Vegas and that is if you get eggs. I remember one season Graziani had 100 females that didn't go!

It took me 19 eggs from 3 different clutches to hit on a bumble bee that should have been 1 in 4 odds. That of course doesn't count the females that never even produced eggs.

You mentioned the BEL and Super Enchi, to breed them together you would have had to have bought them both several years ago when the price for either one of them would cost you way more than the combo you produced today and then someone will ask you why is it so much??

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Also for clarification I was talking about some of the base morph combos that have been around for years not the newer highend stuff I would expect those to have a higher value.

I think alot of the price has to do with availability. Bees are fairly common this year, and cost $350-$500. I've only seen ONE Lithium (cinnamon-butter/lesser) for sale EVER and the price was $1400. It sold in a matter of hours. Both bees and lithiums are fairly easy to make, but more people are making bees, so they're cheaper.
Supply and demand. Find out what ISN'T readily available, and produce that.:gj:

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Originally Posted by mikeandsheleen

I think alot of the price has to do with availability. Bees are fairly common this year, and cost $350-$500. I've only seen ONE Lithium (cinnamon-butter/lesser) for sale EVER and the price was $1400. It sold in a matter of hours. Both bees and lithiums are fairly easy to make, but more people are making bees, so they're cheaper.
Supply and demand. Find out what ISN'T readily available, and produce that.:gj:

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I dont think your statements could be said any better. I have some plans in progress as we speak but I was looking up some other morphs to get some different projects rolling, this is where the price thing started getting to me, especially the ambiguity and lack of consistency. I wouldnt be so bothered by it if there wasnt such wide ranges for the same snakes.THanks alot

I find it hard to believe that nobody feels the same way about this. Forgot to bring this up but considering recessives a lavender albino and a lav ablino would produce 100% lav albinos correct (just an example), and there are many of these single gene morphs produced so why are they so highly priced? Please no biased breeders responded to this. Although many have vested interest in this subject so I'm sure you will.

Technically I would call any recessive visual animal a double gene, as it takes two genes to make it show up, so think of it less like a pastel and more like a super pastel...except lavender albino lol!


Also take into account supply and demand. Lav albinos are hugely gorgeous and a lot of people want and are willing to pay money for them... A lot of things have not been mixed with the lavs yet too, so there is some stuff to be made with them. Another thing to consider is they are recessive.. meaning it takes longer if someone were to get two hets and breed them to get a lav..breed a lav back to a het..etc. Could take a long time. maybe your first year breeding your two 100% hets means you got no lavs at all! Buying a lavender albino saves you effort, you basically get to jump ahead and skip the early stages of breeding that morph. You pay more for the ease and for the time it took for the other breeder..as well as for quality, and for competing with other buyers when everyone wants it!

What do you mean "biased breeders"? I'm not a breeder, I just study business in hobby careers! :)


Another thing to think about when it comes to seeing similar quality animals for varying price has to do with how much the breeder needs the animal gone. Let's say one year...a guy made 20 really REALLY nice bumblebees. They don't have many, they can afford to wait out at a high price for the buyer willing to pay for the quality. But another breeder gets 200 of the same super NICE quality bumblebees...He's probably going to lower the price at least on some of them just to get them out the door so he doesn't have to feed them forever! Then add in stuff like if no one else bred bees last year, or if they are suddenly the 'secret ingredient' for an incredible new morph..or whatever else affects the market!

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Originally Posted by purplemuffin

Technically I would call any recessive visual animal a double gene, as it takes two genes to make it show up, so think of it less like a pastel and more like a super pastel...except lavender albino lol!


Also take into account supply and demand. Lav albinos are hugely gorgeous and a lot of people want and are willing to pay money for them... A lot of things have not been mixed with the lavs yet too, so there is some stuff to be made with them. Another thing to consider is they are recessive.. meaning it takes longer if someone were to get two hets and breed them to get a lav..breed a lav back to a het..etc. Could take a long time. maybe your first year breeding your two 100% hets means you got no lavs at all! Buying a lavender albino saves you effort, you basically get to jump ahead and skip the early stages of breeding that morph. You pay more for the ease and for the time it took for the other breeder..as well as for quality, and for competing with other buyers when everyone wants it!

What do you mean "biased breeders"? I'm not a breeder, I just study business in hobby careers! :)


Another thing to think about when it comes to seeing similar quality animals for varying price has to do with how much the breeder needs the animal gone. Let's say one year...a guy made 20 really REALLY nice bumblebees. They don't have many, they can afford to wait out at a high price for the buyer willing to pay for the quality. But another breeder gets 200 of the same super NICE quality bumblebees...He's probably going to lower the price at least on some of them just to get them out the door so he doesn't have to feed them forever! Then add in stuff like if no one else bred bees last year, or if they are suddenly the 'secret ingredient' for an incredible new morph..or whatever else affects the market!

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Very good points this satisfies my questions. Thankyou for the reasonable answers. Some stuff I considered and some I didnt. what I meant by biased breeders was that maybe some people may be more sensitive to this question especially if their income depends on it.

I think the question was (as I read it), why do people have the same animal priced so very differently?

I think the real answer to that is that some folks are simply panicking in the current slow economy.

Normally, when sales begin to slow down, this is a sign that your prices are too high, and you should lower them. At present, it doesn't actually mean that...overall, people have less money to spend, and they're spending it more slowly. It doesn't matter whether the snake is 600 or 1200, if you don't even have 600 yet, after all.

The old timers, the big names, and the market-savvy people are pricing their animals at what they estimate to be the current reasonable market rate for them. They know that the animals aren't selling as fast as usual, but there's no sense in lower the price.

Those with less experience keep lowering the prices until someone buys the animal, never realizing that they could have gotten twice as much for it, if they had simply waited.

There are also differences in the prices between males and females. In pieds, last year males were selling for 900, while females were 1200. I expect it is the males that some people are 'dumping' for 600 now, while the females are still marked higher.

When people become desperate for money now, they're often willing to take a loss just to make a quick sale. That situation doesn't reflect the market overall, however. Pieds have not really dropped to $600, just because one or two people are dumping them for that price.
You could get a great deal if you snap up these bargains, but be certain to look into the reputation of the seller very well first, and quarantine your purchases strictly. You can never be sure what sort of care an animal received if its owner was hurting for money.

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Originally Posted by WingedWolfPsion

I think the question was (as I read it), why do people have the same animal priced so very differently?

I think the real answer to that is that some folks are simply panicking in the current slow economy.

Normally, when sales begin to slow down, this is a sign that your prices are too high, and you should lower them. At present, it doesn't actually mean that...overall, people have less money to spend, and they're spending it more slowly. It doesn't matter whether the snake is 600 or 1200, if you don't even have 600 yet, after all.

The old timers, the big names, and the market-savvy people are pricing their animals at what they estimate to be the current reasonable market rate for them. They know that the animals aren't selling as fast as usual, but there's no sense in lower the price.

Those with less experience keep lowering the prices until someone buys the animal, never realizing that they could have gotten twice as much for it, if they had simply waited.

There are also differences in the prices between males and females. In pieds, last year males were selling for 900, while females were 1200. I expect it is the males that some people are 'dumping' for 600 now, while the females are still marked higher.

When people become desperate for money now, they're often willing to take a loss just to make a quick sale. That situation doesn't reflect the market overall, however. Pieds have not really dropped to $600, just because one or two people are dumping them for that price.
You could get a great deal if you snap up these bargains, but be certain to look into the reputation of the seller very well first, and quarantine your purchases strictly. You can never be sure what sort of care an animal received if its owner was hurting for money.

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Awesome, this is exactly what I was getting at. Ive been to trade shows and made offers and most of the time they are accepted at often half the price (if I'm picking up a few) and online they are the same way. I figured it had something to do with them moving slowly as well as the market being flooded with that particular gene. I was also kind of thinking that the same thing is starting to happen to previously higher priced morphs. For instance I just seen a killer bee for 650 shipped and I believe on the same site I seen one for 1200 plus shipping and the quality and sex were the same. I dont know, Just wish there was a set standard that wasnt so all over the place. I know I'd be pretty unhappy if I had just bought the one at 1200 and then seen the one marked at 600.