Morphs dropping prices

Jeez!! Ive only been on here for 4 months and ive seen some big changes. Is this just because of the holidays and the next season coming or something else?
For example I just saw on kingsnake a female bee and a male pastel for 600 shipped. I mean for people like me who arent breeding right know its great but how do you guys who live off of it cope with it?

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Originally Posted by jjsnakedude

how do you guys who live off of it cope with it?

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Breed more of them.

You ought to go look at what the prices have dropped from in the last 5 years. That will really make your jaw hit the floor.

I haven't been into the ball python morphs and breeding for very long, but the differences in prices in just these 2 years. I purchased my female pinstripe in 2008. She's an '07, and bought her for $600. Now a female pin is only around $300. I kind of miss how expensive snakes were. All these morphs that used to be thousands of dollars are now mere hundreds. I kind of like the expensive prices because it gives me something to strive for.

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Originally Posted by Jay_Bunny

I haven't been into the ball python morphs and breeding for very long, but the differences in prices in just these 2 years. I purchased my female pinstripe in 2008. She's an '07, and bought her for $600. Now a female pin is only around $300. I kind of miss how expensive snakes were. All these morphs that used to be thousands of dollars are now mere hundreds. I kind of like the expensive prices because it gives me something to strive for.

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I feel your pain. In 2005, I paid $20,000 for a Pinstripe male, and now they are $300. By th time I sold my first Pinstripe, they were $1000. That's the way the market has been working for the last 4 years or so.

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Originally Posted by muddoc

I feel your pain. In 2005, I paid $20,000 for a Pinstripe male, and now they are $300. By th time I sold my first Pinstripe, they were $1000. That's the way the market has been working for the last 4 years or so.

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:O OMG!!!! That sux!

There are 2 sides of the coin, if your a breeder its horrible but if your a buyer it makes some of the earlier really expensive morphs more reachable now which is great.

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Originally Posted by muddoc

Breed more of them.

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The problem with this is the more you make the less their worth.

Supply and demand rules the roost which is why doms, co-doms and supers are and continue to drop in price.

so true the het pieds I got and had saved for ( 3 years) were bought for 800 ( total )in 2007 I have also aquired a possible het pied l after wards as a rescue) now I can buy an mid white pied for about 800 bucks and I am workingon proving out my pieds this year so if lucky I might get the 800 bucks but I doubt it since the prices keep dropping.

I gotten in the last 3 years het axanthic ( pair) het pied( pair) albino (visible) and a pinstripe and a butter. in all I spent about 2-3 grand in the snakes ( just buying ) and I be lucky unless I create a wicked combo will notget that back inthe next 10 years lol..

I bet pinstripe,butter,lessers and spider ( co dom/dom ) traits snakes will all get ot the price of pastels in the next 2-3 years. After that it hard to say were the prices will go I am gussing if there no ban it can vary

they had clowns on kingsnake for 750.00. And it was a female !

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Originally Posted by mechnut450

I bet pinstripe, butter, lessers and spider ( co dom/dom ) traits snakes will all get to the price of pastels in the next 2-3 years.

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As the supply goes up these too should level off "as a guess" just above the cost of pastels, in the end it will be the more popular one of these that hold a slightly higher value than the rest, which one that is is anybodys guess.

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Originally Posted by mechnut450

After that it hard to say were the prices will go I am guessing if there no ban it can vary

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I doubt they ever reach zero :P
Yes, it's difficult to say where they land in value 2-3 years from now.

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Originally Posted by Haydenphoto

they had clowns on kingsnake for 750.00. And it was a female !

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I saw that, that's crazy low :confused:

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Originally Posted by Haydenphoto

they had clowns on kingsnake for 750.00. And it was a female !

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Do you have a link to the ad. I would bet anything that it is a crap example of a clown. I had no problem at all selling my clowns for a lot more than that this year.

I just don't get all of the complaining about prices. You should know going in that you are not going to make your money back by hatching one snake, but in a few clutches you usually will. In most cases I have made back all of my initial investments on my projects in the first season that they have produced babies.

My best example of this is on my Het lavenders. I bought a pair for 7k in early 05. I bred the male to a few normals and the het female in 07. I produced a few poss het females, and my original het female produced one good egg which ended up being a poss het male. The next season the original het female produced nothing. So I was doing pretty poorly with this project. Now this season the poss hets were ready to go and the original 100% het female was ready after not laying the previous season. I ended up proving 2 of the 4 poss hets and the 100% female laid 7 eggs as well. All together I hatched 6 lavenders. Ended up being 2.4. I sold 1.3 lavs, all of the female poss hets that hatched with the lavs and I also sold one of the adult poss hets that proved out. Now this project took longer than most for me to see the results I was looking for, but I still made a huge profit just this season. Now I not only still have my original hets, but I also have 1.2 lavs, and another adult het female (poss het that proved out). This was actually a project that I had bad luck with for quite a while. Now I will say the price I got for my Lavs was quite a bit less than what I paid just for my hets, but I expected that when I bought them and didn't expect to make back my money by producing one lavender.

Most of my other projects have at least broken even quite a bit sooner. Just pick your projects carefully and you will do fine. IMO you have to either be one of the very first with a morph, or you should wait until the price gets down to around 1k. It's the people that get in at the middle who end up losing out. Especially with codoms/doms.

Sorry for the long post, just gets frustrating reading all of the price complaining posts.

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Originally Posted by mechnut450

so true the het pieds I got and had saved for ( 3 years) were bought for 800 ( total )in 2007 I have also aquired a possible het pied l after wards as a rescue) now I can buy an mid white pied for about 800 bucks and I am workingon proving out my pieds this year so if lucky I might get the 800 bucks but I doubt it since the prices keep dropping.

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So produce one pied and you are even, get lucky and hit 2 pieds and you will have almost doubled your money and still have your original snakes to produce many more for many years to come. How much of a profit did you expect to make in one breeding season?

I do think you are right about the other snakes eventually being around pastel prices. I don't think they will get quite that low, but I could easily see $100-$150 lesser, spiders, pins... in the next few seasons. That is why by that time you need to be producing double and triple combos.

I think prices are also dropping for the reason of trying to sell your snakes as fast as possible, or trying to sell your snakes at a low price so more people would buy them. People on Kingsnake have been dropping their prices so they can sell the snake or reptile they have, resulting in more and more people dropping their prices to sell their reptiles faster. Most people aren't that patient and wanna sell what they've got as fast as possible.

I remember BELs used to be 4.5k to 6k, now you can get them as low as 1.5k, or possibly even lower. I remember seeing low white Pieds for $900 at the Phoenix expo, and hatchling normals for $20. Even normals are dropping in price jurasstically. And I'm sure you can get normals for under $20 if you find the right place, or even for free (including adults too). Since YellowBellies have been around a long time, they can even be found for under $100.

I think the dropping in prices is more helpful to those who want to be future breeders but don't have too much money in their wallets, but bad for the larger breeders who are trying to sell their morphs since they are selling things at a much lower price than before. Maybe once the economy gets better things will rise in price.

In all reality the seller makes his prices not the going market. If i think this snake is worth a certain amount then i will sell for that. If its below market then thats not my problem. Im not in this hobby solely to make money so i can go out and buy houses and cars. I sell strictly to buy more to be able to have more projects.

Some sell for the money others sell to move them so others have a chance at that snake cheaper as a pet or to make room for more snakes hatching.

One can not be judged because they're cheaper than the next guy.

Just my $.02

I think that all morphs will hit their own real value. I really dont think that we will see something like clowns for 50 bucks. They will all just hit their real worth and stop going down. think of it this way: if technology stopped advancing, the I- Phone 3G would go down in price until it hit mabey $50 and then stop because thats what its worth when everybody has one. Another example is Cars. they go down in value but workable ones are around 2000-3000 dollars.

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Originally Posted by muddoc

I feel your pain. In 2005, I paid $20,000 for a Pinstripe male, and now they are $300. By th time I sold my first Pinstripe, they were $1000. That's the way the market has been working for the last 4 years or so.

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Yeah, but what if your first pinstripes were produced by a super pastel female?

You may have made money off the first clutch!

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Originally Posted by AnthonyCaponetto

Yeah, but what if your first pinstripes were produced by a super pastel female?

You may have made money off the first clutch!

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There's always a but. If he bred a KillerBee the first time, they would have been worth even more, BUT he didin't. I am not saying I haven't made that money back, as I have produced Spinners, Pin Het Axanthics and LemonBlasts with him. I was just commenting on the original post. These are animals, so every time you make a purchase with a hope of turning a profit, it is always a gamble.

Its just part of the game. There's more supply so prices drop. Plus with this economy, I imagine a lot of people are dumping animals quickly to get some money.

I've done that before. I needed some major car repairs earlier this year and didn't have all of the money so I sold an adult pair of snakes less than their market value simply because I needed money at that time and couldn't wait around to make a sale.

pfan's anecdote is a good example of how you have to think long term. You might not make your money back over a season, or even two, but over three or four you'll easily make it back.

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Originally Posted by muddoc

There's always a but. If he bred a KillerBee the first time, they would have been worth even more, BUT he didin't. I am not saying I haven't made that money back, as I have produced Spinners, Pin Het Axanthics and LemonBlasts with him. I was just commenting on the original post. These are animals, so every time you make a purchase with a hope of turning a profit, it is always a gamble.

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Exactly. The point I was trying to make is that new morphs might make a good investment for some people, but sometimes more established morphs make more sense for others.

If you have tons of adult female morphs to breed something to, then it makes sense to pay big bucks for a new co-dom male. If you just have normal females, you're probably not going to be able to compete in a few years.

I'm in that situation right now. I got a little complacent...OK, I didn't buy anything for the past 3 years. (Ha!) Now I'm eyeballing a desert male and a champagne, and I've realized that I don't have enough morph females to justify getting into a new dominant or co-dom at $3-4K. My $3-4K is better spent on combos that I can use to make lots of females and more combos. Doesn't mean people are stupid for buying those snakes...just that it would be stupid for me.

I am planning on buying a new male this upcoming summer/fall. I plan on the first round of identical offspring I get from him will sell for 1/4th to 1/5th of the price I expect to pay for the male.

From what I've seen on prices, don't buy a male unless you have multiple females to pair up with him so you can recoup the money spent rather quickly. His value (and the offspring) will drop dramatically after a year.

Females seem to hold their value much longer, but it also takes longer to recoup the money spent. The first round of identical offspring of an expensive female will probably sell for 1/8th to 1/10th the price you pay for the female. The value of a morph female is in her ability to produce stuff nicer than her.

The numbers are just guesses, but I wouldn't think reality is that far off.