What Morphs USED to cost ....

Surfing the interwebz because I couldn't sleep, and found these pictures. HOLY CRAP!:O

These are not my photographs, I do not claim them to be mine, and have no affiliation to them.

Look at the freakin reduced clown! It wont let me link the images to the post, so I figured I'd just post the site.

http://www.deadlybeautiful.com/Snake...33324101_TqmFp

For those that are scared to click the link ....

Theres 3 photos that are like holy crap :O ..... $25,000 Male Bumble Bee, $30,000 Male Butter, and a pic of some clowns that are like Ralph Davis's "Flatline" minus the yellowing.

Trey

A base Spider used to cost 25k....a pair of Het Pieds used to cost 30k....and so on....
Triple morphs cost less now a days than what the base morph was selling for yrs ago.

the market has completely changed in the last 5-6 years now those prices are older than that however it just goes to show there really isnt much money to be made in thie hobby unless you are really producing a lot of babies.

Yep. I can remember Lessers being 50K, Calico's were 10-15K, Pieds were 10-15K, pinstripes were 5-8k. Hell I paid 1500 for a female pastel baby and people wonder why I roll my eyes cause they thing 200.00 is to expensive for a spider.

Snake pricing is like anything else--supply and demand.

When a morph is new, big demand and small price.

After it becomes less scarce through breeding, the price goes down.

That's bad news if you are a breeder with a rare morph. On the other hand, I'm glad that piebalds are down to a price that I can afford to buy them instead of window shopping on the internet. :)

Great thread!

How have most breeders taken the decrease in price but the increase in popularity? I wasn't around when THOSE prices were valid. I do remember spiders being $1000-1500, lessers being about $1800, pieds were around $5-6000. I can understand being bitter dropping $1500 on a spider and now selling them for $150. I can also see it being much easier to sell. There is a very small amount of people willing to spend $3000 on a single animal, much less $25000. On the other hand a lot of people are willing to spend $300-1000 on a single animal.

Going back 6+ years on fauna classifieds, it seems that market prices drop by about half every 18-24 months.

Whether that has held true since the first pastel was available, or will hold true in the future.. *shrugs*, but the cumulative power of halving a price every two years is pretty big.

Supply and demand, people. Breed lots of spiders, sell 'em to lots of people who will them breed them and produce more will only force the market price lower and lower, unless new demand is created.. Essentially unless you can recruit a new herpetoculturist to the hobby for every hatchling you produce, prices for any particular morph will diminish and eventually level out somewhere around the cost to produce.

Our little pyramid scheme ;)

well it would ssem that the price of pieds and ablbinos would be aot lower if the market was halfing itself every 2 or so years just the albino has been around for decades and its still 300-500 but its trure supply and demand too bad we cant unite under one banner and be like the oil trade 3.55 a gal in my part for a berral of oil thats the cheapest its been in 18 months ya suppy and demand

I don't know...if all morphs leveled out in price, I think breeders would make more than it costs to produce. Saying all morphs are equal, I would average about 6 egg clutches. I would sell my piebalds and normals for about $50 a piece. That is $300 per clutch. I don't know about you but it doesn't cost me $300 a year to house, heat, and feed each snake.

Oh man...$50 for a killer clown creamsicle. I'll take two! Hahaha...

I may be in the minority here, but I think the price drop may have been the best thing that could have happened. It generated a tremendous amount of interest in what was once a rather exclusive community. As prices dropped, more and more people could join, learn, exchange what they had learned, and influence the rest of the community. It's hard to be afraid of something that's familiar. It's hard to pass a law banning your 10 year old kid's pet. Just my two cents ;)

I think I'll start a thread about this.

GoFride,

That's what I was getting at. I wanted to know if breeders have found it to be a good or bad thing overall. I have a local breeder here that also thinks it is great. Imagine if purebred dogs were all thousands of dollars apiece and never decreased in price. I sure you would see a lot more mutts running around than Dalmatians.

I would love see a thread specifically on people opinion on this!

I agree that the price drop was beneficial. but check out some of fauna's BOI threads from the early 2000s about scammers who were selling 'hets'. they were asking market price for het albinos and pieds, but were really selling normals, and making a killing. don't get me wrong, I hope they got whatever was coming to them in this life and the next, but I remember being put off of BPs in college due to the exorbitant prices.

That makes me sad. Though i always like to read stories when the snakes were very expensive. makes me wanna take my snakes out of her tubs and rub them on my face in thankful-ness that i was able to get them.

Those clowns were in Daytona of 05 at BHB's table. I remember back when BHB sold 4 pins in Daytona for 25k a peice. Spiders were flying out the racks at 17-20k a peice. I remember getting normal female balls from pet stores for $50 and selling them in the market for $1000. When the prices were that high it was crazy how things were selling, but people started producing rediculous amounts of them and thats when the prices dropped as much as they did. You are able to reach a much larger market with the lower prices, just have to produce a few more snakes.

Here's a Desert that was in Daytona 05 for 25k :)
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v1...ictures330.jpg

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Abaddon91

well it would ssem that the price of pieds and ablbinos would be aot lower if the market was halfing itself every 2 or so years

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I posted my "halving every 18 months to every 2 years" guesstimation some time ago, and I remember specifically looking at pieds, het pieds, and lessers. Just to double check myself, I did it again. It took about 1 minute.

1) Do a search on the Ball Python section of fauna classifieds for 'piebald'

2) Pull up the first result (2011, very recent) and last result (2005, 6 years ago)

new
http://www.faunaclassifieds.com/foru...hlight=piebald

old
http://www.faunaclassifieds.com/foru...hlight=piebald

3) According to my estimation, if 6 years ago a piebald cost 6k, then today it would go for $375-$750

4) Recent post lists asking price at $600.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by eel588

Oh man...$50 for a killer clown creamsicle. I'll take two! Hahaha...

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It's happened with pastels.

It's happened with most corn snake combos.

Ball pythons have small clutches, so it will take a long time to get there, but there are big forces at work here driving prices down, and in the future you WILL see crazy combos for $100-200 that today are fetching thousands.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by mainbutter

I posted my "halving every 18 months to every 2 years" guesstimation some time ago, and I remember specifically looking at pieds, het pieds, and lessers. Just to double check myself, I did it again. It took about 1 minute.

1) Do a search on the Ball Python section of fauna classifieds for 'piebald'

2) Pull up the first result (2011, very recent) and last result (2005, 6 years ago)

new
http://www.faunaclassifieds.com/foru...hlight=piebald

old
http://www.faunaclassifieds.com/foru...hlight=piebald

3) According to my estimation, if 6 years ago a piebald cost 6k, then today it would go for $375-$750

4) Recent post lists asking price at $600.

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I think quality pieds still go for $800-$1000 but no one would ever accuse you of not knowing what you're talking about. as a verified clairvoyant, feel free to send any future tips my way sir.

Mainbutter, I have looked at many ridiculous corn snake morphs for next to nothing. When BPs get that low I will have some insane projects to work on! I can't believe I am able to buy double gene animals for $350-500 these days! High or low prices, ball pythons are always welcome to make babies at my place. They are such an amazing species with an incredibly diverse selection of color and pattern, almost all having lap dog personalities. How could you give that up? If a four gene animal was only worth $50 I would have the most amazing colored and patterned animals on the block!

The same thing is happening with crested geckos. They are an amazing, easy to deal with species. Everyone wants them, supply and demand. All the prices seem to be gravitating downward toward $30 ridiculous morphs...

Even though corn snakes and leopard geckos have dropped tremendously in price many people still thrive to produce the best and latest. There always be people willing to buy them, and people will be happy to sell to them.

This thread is really interesting. I wish more breeders would voice their opinions on whether they find the lowered pricing to be beneficial or harmful to their business.

Yeah I wonder, if ball python prices ever get so low their profit is based on the breeder's overhead, and the prices sort of homogenize like corns - will morphs just be picking what you think looks the best, paying a bit more for more genes or recessives, etc? Then again, they don't have nearly as many babies a year as cornsnakes.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by eel588

I wish more breeders would voice their opinions on whether they find the lowered pricing to be beneficial or harmful to their business.

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The majority of people who purchase ball python morphs with the intention of breeding will never see a profit. The biggest factor behind this is that they can't get 'ahead' of dropping prices. The only way to have a shot is to buy your way up the 'pyramid'.

Keep in mind, the 'majority' that I'm talking about are the kinds of people who buy a pastel or spider male for their first snake, think about breeding it, then go buy a more expensive morph female and take three or four years before they get a successful clutch out of her.

I'm running a little experiment with our POG male and Pastel Het OG female. The goal is to see if, keeping back the best animal from each clutch every season, we are able to break even or hopefully make a profit. A lot depends on hard work, good planning, and luck. My bet is that the first season will not come close to paying for two years of maintenance, caging, and the initial cost of the snakes. However, I'm betting that 6-8 years out, once holdbacks from the first two seasons are producing, we will eventually see small profits, if we're able to get SPOG to SPOG clutches and sell each snake for $200 or so by the end of that timeframe.

Breeders would love to see prices stay stable, and it's not just because they feel like their snakes are 'worth it'. If prices were more stable, that would mean an exponentially increasing number of people are flocking to the hobby. Snake breeding->New snakes->Selling to breeders->Snake breeding causes an exponential increase in supply, so a similar rise in demand would be necessary. So yes, I would LOVE to see prices stay flat, and so should everyone else in the hobby.. not for the love of money, but for the love of sharing our passion with others.

However, most breeders do not see dropping prices as a 'bad' thing. In fact, their prices remain fairly stable. 'HUH?' you say? I don't mean prices per morph, but the market value of their entire year's production. They don't care about any particular morph being worth $X. To maintain profits, all they need is for the 2011 generation to be as valuable in 2011 as 2010 generation was valued at market price in 2010, and so on going back to when they first started.

To maintain the value year to year of a new generation, they need to stay ahead of the 'morph game'. If the first season they produce a pastel, and then their second and third seasons they are producing bumblebees and super pastels, and the fourth and fifth seasons they are producing killer bees, then they likely aren't seeing a drop in price.. for the average ball python that they sell. As long as demand for the newest and hottest morph on the market is there, some breeders can make profits.

The tricky thing about shooting for profits in ball pythons is that you do have to think about it as a pyramid scheme. You buy your way in, you do your work, you produce some clutches, and that season you get $X in revenue. Next year, even if you had a holdback combo male powerhouse, you likely aren't going to see a jump in revenue, but you very well may see your revenue stay stable. Don't like where you are in the pyramid, and need to generate more revenue every year? You have to buy your way up higher.

how much I would love a time machine right now :o:O:O:O:O