Market "crashing"- your take on the future

Ok don't even get me started.

I know a couple who decided about 4 years ago, that breeding ball pythons was the way to get rich quick. They bought a number of morphs, investing a good deal of money, and began the process of raising and breeding them. In the meantime, the limited market surrounding our only decent reptile show began to get a little saturated, and buyers started slowing down in their purchases. Naturally, the usual rumors of the market crashing began to circulate. I was patient however, and eventually all my snakes sold for good prices. This year, they had their first good batch of babies to sell, and went to the first few shows with little result. I told them to expect that and be patient. Of course, they were all doom and gloom and woe is us! So what did they do? At the last show we were at, they were all but giving away their babies. Double genes and singles. It was pitiful. Naturally, brokers and flippers were right there to offer stupid low amounts for snakes already so underpriced it was sickening. And they were only too happy to sell, because as they put it, "If we don't sell them now, they'll never sell." I was so mad I couldn't see straight. Thanks to these morons giving away their animals, not only did I not sell any of my snakes, but they now ensure that people at the next show will be expecting everyone to match those stupid low prices, or they won't buy. I've never seen a decent breeder stuck holding onto snakes for season after season unless they wanted to, but you could not tell these dummies anything. Two shows of not selling out in five minutes, and they had given up. I tell you, if I had had the money, I'd have bought everything they had because I could easily have tripled or even quadrupled my investment. One guy I remember bought a pewter, a cinnamon yellowbelly, a cinnapin, and a cinnamon enchi all for $75. And I'm not kidding. It was so stupid. And even now, they have no idea how much they hurt everyone else at that show by their idiot stunt.

So buy your single gene dominant morphs and breed them to normals if it suits you. But for the love of Pete, know what to expect when you go to sell the babies! Don't ruin everything for the rest of us because you didn't make a fortune in the first 15 minutes.

Gale

Tough game to play but if you love the animals and what you can produce then you can stick it out and its worth it!

Here's my take on everything:

I think that with the economy still out of whack a lot of people aren't buying like they used to. Instead a lot of people want to pay little to nothing for animals, but yet they want quality at the same time. I'm not saying everybody as this forum is only a small part of the reptile world.

People that breed reptiles and do it for a living aren't selling as much as they used to, and with so many people on social media sites this is how I believe the reptile auctions started. Then when some of your other breeders noticed that other places were auctioning off and getting constant business then they tried to adopt it. So now you have these breeders that are auctioning off site and they're large enough to where they have everything the smaller breeders are trying to sell. So then an animal that normally sells for say $800 just went for $350. So now in a lot of peoples mind that animal is now only worth $350, so they don't want to pay anything more then that. So the word gets spread about how much they paid for that animal and so when somebody else wants that morph they can only find it for say $750 at the cheapest and one of the ones they found that they really liked was $850. Well we'll just say the $850 is a lot more visually appealing(hence the price difference) so they're trying to get them all down to the same price. That's one reason that stuff isn't selling to where it was in the past, but then factor in the auction where it just went for $350, so people are assuming that the $750+ are inflated prices and are just waiting for the animal to come down. We, or most of us know that the larger the animal the more you typically ask because of the time/investment into that animal, but a lot of people don't understand this. So in the mean time some of the smaller breeders are having a ton of snakes that they haven't sold and need to make room for the upcoming hatches so they lower the price.

Now that's where it really crashes the price because one breeder lowered the price just to sell some animals to make room for others hatching and now the other breeders see this and they're all wanting to move their animal before the price falls. This is how you typically see a morph come down drastically in price. If they'd just hold out, or not come down as much then the market wouldn't take so bad of a hit. The thing is though, the longer you have an animal the more you invest to feed that animal over time. Then after that you have that set price in a way, so then when babies come around that's the price people want to pay. All of the morphs that have took a dive, for the most part have balanced back out, like albinos and pieds. Because once you have a demand for a morph and you don't have all the people with that morph the price slowly climbs back out where it balances itself out at. Then especially once you start playing with additional genes into that animal. Now this is my general summary of everything.

The places doing auctions I'd be willing to best aren't selling what they used to in past years, which is likely the reason they've took to the auctions. Though in all honesty, in the near future you're likely to see a lot more auctions because people are noticing how quickly they can sell their animals that way, so then you're going to start seeing more price drops, and this I think will tick a lot of people off. That's the reason most of us recommend to people if you're going to get into breeding ball pythons for the $$ then you're in it for the wrong reason. I plan on doing it because I enjoy dealing with my snakes and I find it a satisfying hobby. Yea it would be way more awesome if the snake could talk back to me or something, but all the same.

As I once read in a book, reptiles have never been the most popular hobby, but it's always been there and it's always been consistent. I got this from a great book called: "The Lizard King", which I recommend anybody who hasn't read it to read it.

Again this is all from my perspective and this doesn't make anything true but look at the facts that I've compiled and look at how quickly the Banana/Coral Glow has fallen from when the first ones were purchased at $50,000 and what they cost now.

One last thing I'll add is this is the reason I stick with morphs I like or go for morphs that appeal to me.

I wrote crashing in quotes because I do think there are people looking for nice animals and are willing to pay a bit more for the quality/look they are going for and that the appeal of a healthy pretty snake would trump that of a cheap one. It is frustrating knowing that I spent alot of money building up a nice collection of healthy, gorgeous animals to have someone tell me they are practically worthless. I just wanted to get a different perspective from all of you, the more opinions the better...FB reptiles groups have been irking me and I thought I would get this market question off of my chest..there is so much crazy price slashing that I do wonder about being able to sustain my hobby with the money I get from future clutches.

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Originally Posted by Dragonviper

I wrote crashing in quotes because I do think there are people looking for nice animals and are willing to pay a bit more for the quality/look they are going for and that the appeal of a healthy pretty snake would trump that of a cheap one. It is frustrating knowing that I spent alot of money building up a nice collection of healthy, gorgeous animals to have someone tell me they are practically worthless. I just wanted to get a different perspective from all of you, the more opinions the better...FB reptiles groups have been irking me and I thought I would get this market question off of my chest..there is so much crazy price slashing that I do wonder about being able to sustain my hobby with the money I get from future clutches.

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Yea, I can't say I'm fond of it either. I normally try to stick with my local breeders anyways as I have fantastic ones here.

Sean Bradley(Exotics By Nature)
Tim Bailey(Bailey & Bailey Reptiles)
Luke Martin(Bronze Serpent Reptiles)

I quite often visit Sean and Tim at their house so I've seen their facilities and all that, plus I know they have clean animals on top of that. I haven't been to Luke's but I'm sure I could if I asked, but I don't want to deal with the traffic to get to his place lol. Sean & Tim are like 20 minutes from me.

I have a few other snakes that I've gotten from members on the forum, but aside from that I stick with local, mainly because I can see the snake in person and it's much easier to pinpoint what I like by looking in person rather than from a picture. Then another reason is because I don't have to fork out shipping money.

I recently got a Lesser Pastel from a guy from FL at the Repticon in Baton Rouge and when I got home I found it infested with mites upon closer inspection. That's one reason I like to deal local, as I know the conditions of my local guys and I'd vouch for them in a heartbeat.

As far as the auctions go though, I did get a Mahogany male from Ben Siegel when I won the auction at $312, though I had a friend watching it to make sure nobody out bid me because I was sleeping for the final few hours of the auction. He kept saying this is a $750 retail snake, which honestly rather annoyed me and I was going to post in what market are you referring to, but I chose to keep my mouth shut. That male is probably about what he paid for it maybe a bit more, because I know who he got that snake from. He said in that auction that he could add a female for $800. I again held my tongue, because what I wanted to say is that while he got those snakes from Amir, in no way did he pay close to $800. So he's inflating some serious price when he buys/trades then sells.

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Originally Posted by angllady2

Ok don't even get me started...

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Thanks for that awesome explanation. I had no idea the dynamics of the market were that complex.

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Originally Posted by ViperSRT3g

Thanks for that awesome explanation. I had no idea the dynamics of the market were that complex.

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I wouldn't say it's that complex. I'd say it happens a lot more than most realize. People get into this hobby and then either get too impatient to sell their animals or can't afford to feed their hatchlings so they undersell at shows and auctions. It not only ruins it for the breeders who now have to compete with the lower price but the general crowd now expects a lower price. I perfectly understand that that's the price of a free market, but you undermine the integrity and hard work of legitimate breeders who now will either go out of business/hobby or will focus more at producing quantity instead of quality in order to sustain themselves.


I'm not rich by any means, but I rather support local breeders, pay fmv and build relationships, than buy from someone who's just trying to unload their animals and sink the market.

Sent using Tapatalk

The future is lower prices. The supply/demand curve for ball pythons leads to nothing else.

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Originally Posted by Neal

Yea, I can't say I'm fond of it either. I normally try to stick with my local breeders anyways as I have fantastic ones here.

As far as the auctions go though, I did get a Mahogany male from Ben Siegel when I won the auction at $312, though I had a friend watching it to make sure nobody out bid me because I was sleeping for the final few hours of the auction. He kept saying this is a $750 retail snake, which honestly rather annoyed me and I was going to post in what market are you referring to, but I chose to keep my mouth shut. That male is probably about what he paid for it maybe a bit more, because I know who he got that snake from. He said in that auction that he could add a female for $800. I again held my tongue, because what I wanted to say is that while he got those snakes from Amir, in no way did he pay close to $800. So he's inflating some serious price when he buys/trades then sells.

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I see this a lot at the local shows the one company goes around at the end of the show (near end) and buys up a lot of the animals for less than half price and have the same snakes later on at a high price. (I wont deal with the company at these shows due to his practice.
But I do believe the market will level out at some point, we may never see the high prices we originally purchased the animals for again (once we breed them.)
but I hope that the market still hold enough value to keep the snakes to be consider more than a trend animal in the future..

a really interesting thread :) ill try to respond to this reply, because it raises some interesting questions.

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Originally Posted by aldebono

A little input/more discussion.

As a small time hobby breeder, I am not sad that many more morphs are coming into my price range.
However, I would like to preserve the market for years to come. Is there any way we can successfully do that?

Should we be more selective about our breeding and not just put two together to make more babies? Quality vs Quantity?
Should we not breed every normal female we have if the outcome would just be more single codoms?
Should we work towards supers in order to not create any normals in a clutch?
Or are we going to have state and federal laws crash down on top of us before we hit a full on market crash?

This is what I have been weighing in my head for this breeding season.
I also have been struggling on deciding if I should buy more morphs or not, with more anti exotic laws coming up.

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"However, I would like to preserve the market for years to come. Is there any way we can successfully do that?"

asked like that, im tempted to say no. every seller has some limited effect on the market and can influence things to a degree and can try to help keep the market a bit more stable. but ultimately, you cannot prevent anyone from producing 50 hatchlings of a specific morph each year, which will lower the price to a degree even if sold slowly and carefully. and you cannot prevent the massive price undercutting that sometimes happen at auctions, or as emergency sales, or because people panic.

Should we be more selective about our breeding and not just put two together to make more babies? Quality vs Quantity?

absolutely.

Should we not breed every normal female we have if the outcome would just be more single codoms?

absolutely, quality over quantity.

Should we work towards supers in order to not create any normals in a clutch?

not just to prevent any normals. supers will also be important to hit the right combos, those that really look good, with high reliability. lets say a breeder has super mystics, super mojaves, super pastels, and super black pastels, and super enchis. he can now choose to produce clutches where all hatchlings are the same, he can produce a clutch of pewters, or mochis, or mystic potions, or black mojo, or pastel enchi, or enchi mystic, and so on. or more supers. supers make it easy to hit the double and triple gene combos that really look good, with very good odds.

Or are we going to have state and federal laws crash down on top of us before we hit a full on market crash?

lets hope that never happens. but i do see how something like that, even if its just one state, or the fear of it, could have really bad effects on the market.


in general i think prices for each individual morph (if its not already a low-priced morph) will continue to fall from season to season. thats just the way it is. and new morphs appear and enter the market at a high price, and then start falling like the others. things like panic sales can temporarily undercut the market, the market is quite volatile and sometimes prices can do a dive and come back up again. but in general things are not looking too bad.