Prices down?

Another side of the lowered prices is that it allows a lot more people to enjoy these amazing animals. My sons and I are having a blast in this hobby. It is a great learning experience for them and a great bonding opportunity for us. This would not be possible for us if Pieds were still $10,000 and Spiders were still $5000. I understand that it must me frustrating for those that are trying to make a business out of this, but for those of us in it as a hobby it sure has opened up a world of opportunity.

To be honest the market is so extremely over saturated anymore that anyone just now starting will be pretty much screwed if they ever hope to make money off of it. Not to burst bubbles or anything but unless you have tens of thousands of dollars to invest in a start up project that not many people are working with you will be pouring money into something for the duration of time that you have it. Sadly most of the animals purchased every day end up either dead due to improper care or on craigslist. At one point I made a pretty good living off of just breeding normals and selling them to pet shops but now a normal is 100% pointless to produce intentionally. I wish this was not the case but it is. Almost all single gene animals are about to end up in the same place as normals in a very short time and then double gene and so on. The only thing worth anything at all in this industry for much longer is recessives but even with them they will come down. Take a look at cornsnakes for example an amel is the same price as a normal and as a snow or even a snow motley.... A triple recessive animal is the same price as a normal.... That is where the ball python industry will be heading IF people do not stop mass producing animals and just breeding some random normal because they think it may have something special when they have no real experience in what to look for. Most of the subtle morphs were found by people who have been in this business for a long time and have seen millions and millions of baby ball pythons so they actually know what to look for.

Don't get me wrong I love these animals and I love this industry but unless either less animals are produced or more people start buying them there will be no point in breeding them for very long. Maybe we as a group need to reach out more and build a new client base.

Ok sorry for the rant just had to get all this out.

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Originally Posted by T&C Exotics

To be honest the market is so extremely over saturated anymore that anyone just now starting will be pretty much screwed if they ever hope to make money off of it. Not to burst bubbles or anything but unless you have tens of thousands of dollars to invest in a start up project that not many people are working with you will be pouring money into something for the duration of time that you have it. Sadly most of the animals purchased every day end up either dead due to improper care or on craigslist. At one point I made a pretty good living off of just breeding normals and selling them to pet shops but now a normal is 100% pointless to produce intentionally. I wish this was not the case but it is. Almost all single gene animals are about to end up in the same place as normals in a very short time and then double gene and so on. The only thing worth anything at all in this industry for much longer is recessives but even with them they will come down. Take a look at cornsnakes for example an amel is the same price as a normal and as a snow or even a snow motley.... A triple recessive animal is the same price as a normal.... That is where the ball python industry will be heading IF people do not stop mass producing animals and just breeding some random normal because they think it may have something special when they have no real experience in what to look for. Most of the subtle morphs were found by people who have been in this business for a long time and have seen millions and millions of baby ball pythons so they actually know what to look for.

Don't get me wrong I love these animals and I love this industry but unless either less animals are produced or more people start buying them there will be no point in breeding them for very long. Maybe we as a group need to reach out more and build a new client base.

Ok sorry for the rant just had to get all this out.

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Just a few points...

1) Starting a legit business with "tens of thousands" is barely a start. To really make a go of this and earn a decent living, there has to be a pretty sizeable initial investment. A business loan or investors is what is needed, imo. I would think at least an initial $100k up front for breeders, racks, supplies, display cases, incubators, rodent racks, etc. Considering what the hottest new morphs go for (20-50k?) that 100k is probably really conservative.

2) Every year, complete newbs post threads about weird looking babies and they end up being something new. And these new genes are what carries this business. Without those, it's done.

If I was looking to make this a business, I'd be doing it similiar to how FloridaReptileRanch is...go big, or just keep the day job. :D

I think it's sad what's happening with the prices. They will just keep going lower and lower until they're worth basically nothing. I just bought a 3 gene male for only $400, where as I paid $1,200 easy last year for just a double gene female. That same snake's morphs are going for about $600 currently.
The people who are in this for the money will just keep lowering their prices to get the sales, and then everyone else will have to match the prices if they want to sell anything, but I refuse to, my snakes are worth more than rock bottom prices.

I breed rabbits too, one of the most difficult breeds due to markings, and also a very popular one. I have been forced to sell my pets for just $3 each, or sometimes even less. Just to put in to perspective how hard these are to breed, I currently have ~30 young ones, and I am only interested in keeping 2 of them. I have had litters of 10 with not a single show rabbit. And these rabbits are selling for as little as $35!!! The lowest I will ever go on my rabbits is $50, I feel they are worth that especially with their genetics that those $35 rabbits DONT have. It's not just reptiles, but other animals too, such as dogs, cats, rabbits, and probably birds too among other things.

I think some of this may have something to do with the current economy. People are laid off or under-employed, paying more taxes than they ever knew before, uncertain future, health insurance premiums going up, etc. The previous reply mentioned rabbits being low, and suspecting it's the same with other animals. I think that's true to an extent too. I know with horses it is really hard to even GIVE away a horse now. May not necessarily be the case for top quality show horses (though I'm sure even those aren't selling for what they did 5 years ago), but for your average horses, you can't sell them any more. I see horses on Craigslist as "free to good home" all the time. It's really sad. I follow a group that buys and rehabs auction horses, and they are getting horses with papers and well known names in their pedigrees, sometimes even horses with good show records, for only a couple hundred (which years ago would have been thousands). I don't really follow much more than that, so I don't know what the show breeders are seeing. This just seems to be the day and age where people want a lot, but for the cost of nothing.

I frequent the Kingsnake.com classifieds daily and when I was selecting a dealer to purchase a small group from, I saw a lot of adds like, "must go", "Do not need these for my Projects", "Rack clearing", and of course, "Due to [insert understandable/legitimate reason] I am selling off most of my stock". I really think people get a bit in over there heads with balls because they are just so nice you just want to get a nice 3.6 breeding group in the mail/at a show and down the road you realize you have other projects you want work on. So, you end up selling a nice proven male Mojave for what some people pay for a hatching. There is also the fact that breeding is not exactly rocket science and we are seeing a lot dedicated younger people (such as myself) who just want to play with snakes, produce some cool stuff, and break even. I will admit that I did ask for some info on some adds that seemed too good to be true, but ended up purchasing from a more reputable breeder...I did not pay a drastic amount more either.

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Originally Posted by gsarchie

I would love to know of an example of this.

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The Red-Tailed Black Shark is very common in the aquarium trade and it seems extirpated in the wild.
If not for hobbyists there would be no hope of every returning a wild population to their prior range. Not that I am aware of a program to do so as of yet.
That I wouldn't expect until the majority of people in Thailand are living comfortably and can concern themselves with things beyond survival and subsistence.