Market "crashing"- your take on the future

There has been ALOT of talk in the bp world of market crashing- either by auctions/closet breeders/saturation etc. (depending on who you ask). I became involved in this community a few years ago and decided to breed balls because I love them as a species and think that all the variability in their patterns/colors is absolutely breathtaking. I have invested a nice chunk of money in high end morphs (i.e.,OD/GHI/Pieds) and hit the jackpot in terms of the quality of my animals (not my own bias I promise:), other people have told me they are good looking too). I want to know the opinions of others on the market in terms of the future pricing of high end morphs and quality base morphs.

I ask this question because my small time breeding operation (I do not want to become a full time breeder or large scale breeder) is just a hobby, with the potential for me to break even and use the money I make with high end snakes to funnel back into breeding/save it for a rainy day. I hope that in a year or two, when I really pick up on production, I will have people willing to purchase really pretty snakes I've produced at reasonable prices. Do you think quality animals will continue to sell at reasonable prices in the next 5 years, or will they just plummet to a point where they loose the potential value? You can focus your answer on OD/GHI/Pied genes for this question if it makes it easier to explain (since they have alot of appeal and I happen to be working with them)

I don't see a snake selling for 1-10k a reasonable price. But its just like dog breeding you will have prices going up and down but they still sell them for ridicules prices even tho so man of them are made ever year

I actually don't see the market crashing, what I see is the normal trend with a few high end projects, such as banana and ghi crashing. OD on the other hand has either followed the normal trend or actually imo gone slower than normal. Pied has also followed the normal trend and it's recessive, so prices tend to fall even slower with them.

Did people "lose" a bunch of money in some high end projects, yes. Are some single gene morphs selling for under 100 bucks? yes, but isn't it about time? Demand is shrinking for single genes and supply will only go up... what happens then?

Auctions have a problem of the true price being in public, unlike the advertise for one price and sell for another in a normal ad.

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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Originally Posted by aldebono

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

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Yep... give value to your animals and don't sell your snakes to the first person that comes along and offers x amount. Set a price and stick to your guns.

The market isn't crashing. However, I see a lot of people not being patient with their sales and dropping prices because they think it will either get them a quick buck or gain them respect with others... which it does neither. Most of these people that are dropping prices probably never thought about how to feed 30-100 mouths a week either, i.e. babies they produce and "need to dump" their animals because of this poor planning.

Patience pays off in the BP world :gj:

Don't be that impatient person and always have a solid, self-reliable plan to feed your snakes consistently (breed your own rats!!)

I think it's too much of quantity winning over quality. I keep seeing people breeding single gene males to normals. A pastel x normal isn't going to get you anything stunning. It's just adding more of an already dirt cheap gene to the population. I have all morph females and a pinstripe male. I will not be using that male for breeding . My plan is to buy a specific three gene male that has the genes to certain combos I'm chasing. So with all of my crosses with that male I'll have the chance of hitting 4 genes in one and in one cross a chance at five genes. Even then it doesn't really matter how many genes you tack on if they aren't nice examples of the morphs. I just feel like with males it's better that he have more genes than the females he's breeding to. My other male plans are ax fire and a pied with an extra morph I haven't decided on yet.

I think as long as you have a quality example of the gene, your animals are still going to sell for a decent price. If you don't you'll be sitting on them longer and sell for a lower price. I know with horses a lot of times people will hold out on the price of a nice horse. Eventually that right person comes along and are happy to pay the price for a quality animal.

I made a thread similar to this one. The single gene snakes are going out of style. Yes there will always be the new person wanting the single gene but those people will soon be getting the double gene animals and then triple gene and so on and so on. Me personally... I think more breedings should be done to NOT produce single gene animals. More people should be trying for the supers to breed instead of just throwing snakes together. Also I think breeders should be breeding less animals to have less saturation.

I've seen "market is/will crash" for about a decade with no sign on it actually happening yet. I think there was a heyday for BPs back then but there's still a decent market.

I agree, everyone should be breeding for high quality, not just "Hey I have two snakes". When you take lousy quality and breed it, and end up with lousy quality animals, then you can't get top price, people won't want to buy them at all, and then suddenly it seems like there's "no market for BPs".

If you use high quality morphs/snakes and breed for the very best, then there's generally a market.

If it's a recessive gene, it will never degrade as much as dominant gene value.

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Originally Posted by wolfy-hound

I've seen "market is/will crash" for about a decade with no sign on it actually happening yet. I think there was a heyday for BPs back then but there's still a decent market.

I agree, everyone should be breeding for high quality, not just "Hey I have two snakes". When you take lousy quality and breed it, and end up with lousy quality animals, then you can't get top price, people won't want to buy them at all, and then suddenly it seems like there's "no market for BPs".

If you use high quality morphs/snakes and breed for the very best, then there's generally a market.

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x2 on this^ I think the market is great imo it just changes from time to time. 2013 was my best sales year yet and 2014 is looking even more promising.

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.

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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.

See I don't mind selling animals at a very low price, but not to an individual buyer. I understand how that "crashes" the market, and in the long run any breeder that is selling dirt cheap to the public is only harming his/her own business. Along with everyone else's. If people want to sell dirt cheap (and I plan to sell all my single gene and hets for dirt cheap) why not do it to one of the big breeders? I know they are going to turn around and sell those animals for retail price and make a huge profit, but you've still sold your animals, and by them jacking up the price to make their own profit it keeps prices high so that when you can afford to hold out for the right price on your animals you won't have so much of a loss. That's my plan anyway. I already contacted several of the large breeders/sellers and told them about all the snakes I'm going to try to breed this season and asked what prices they'll pay me for them. No, the prices aren't great, and most of them weren't even half of what I could advertise them for, but that's not the important thing for me. The important thing for me is that I can sell all my hets and single genes after a few feeds and not have to worry about feeding them for the months it might take me to move them on my own for a higher price. And even better, many of the breeders said they would trade me for my babies for some of the higher end morphs I want. And while I'll make a small, very small, profit off of them I'll do it without damaging the prices of other small time breeders because the big breeders/sellers I sold to are going to turn around and jack the prices up to retail value and make a nice profit. I, personally, don't see anything wrong with that. So to me selling cheap isn't the problem. It's selling cheap to the public and not your fellow breeders that is the problem. And I'll probably get a lot of flack for that, but that's my two cents.

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Originally Posted by TexanLady

If people want to sell dirt cheap (and I plan to sell all my single gene and hets for dirt cheap) why not do it to one of the big breeders?

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I don't think the discussion is about wholesaling your animals to a big breeder or a local shop. I think we're talking about people who wholesale their snakes at shows or online which diminishes prices for other breeders selling the same morph.

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Originally Posted by Dragonviper

There has been ALOT of talk in the bp world of market crashing- either by auctions/closet breeders/saturation etc. (depending on who you ask).

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No there has NOT been a LOT of talk about market crashing. There has been the inevitable grumbling and griping of a relatively small number of very vocal butthurt individuals who feel a need to whine about the inevitable price drop of a very common and easily bred pet snake that happens to come in a wide variety of paint jobs all because they don't feel that they are making the kind of profits that they feel they deserve. This kind of grumbling has been going on for DECADES in the ball python world, and yet there still seems to be a market for these animals. Go figure.

Well I think another problem is people dont really understand the history of somewhat free freemarkets. In general those markets decline down to about 3% profit on sales when they mature. I think alot of people are used to seeing double their returns on investment but as this market matures they will see profits sink. This is just natural because everyone has an incentive to undercut other business owners, its not the end of the world but it is the end of the idea that you can get rich quick off these animals, that time is gone.

Meh I'm to busy cleaning snake poop and trying to keep snake bellies full to really track the market as a whole. I will say this I sold out in 2012, 2013 and plan to do the same in 2014. My personal opinion when the "Market" get's you down go find yourself one of your favorite snakes and rememeber they are still awesome animals reguardless what (catchy business name with the word Balls or reptiles in it goes here) in Underarm, New Mexico is getting for their animals. If you're a business then you adjust to offset overhead and move on, if you're a hobbiest enjoy your snakes and when you sell some buy me a beer at the next Repticon we're at.. The end

P.S. Tonight is cleaning a feeding night. :D

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Originally Posted by OctagonGecko729

Well I think another problem is people dont really understand the history of somewhat free freemarkets. In general those markets decline down to about 3% profit on sales when they mature. I think alot of people are used to seeing double their returns on investment but as this market matures they will see profits sink. This is just natural because everyone has an incentive to undercut other business owners, its not the end of the world but it is the end of the idea that you can get rich quick off these animals, that time is gone.

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i dont think this comparison works. what you say applies to a market that is similar to, lets say, the market for tungsten. or rice. one product that is quite uniform. where you have one market price for one product and it doesnt really matter who produces it. there are different qualities of it, but thats it when it comes to complexity.

the BP market is more like the market for cellphones. highly complex. if you want a cellphone that works and has good durability and good battery life, that costs 5 dollars. one of the old indestructible nokia bones off ebay. good audio quality, needs charging only once a week, and when you drop it you just puzzle it back together and it still works. but people pay more for a brand new branded smartphone. and when you look at the best smartphones from 3 years ago, prices are way down, and you can pick them up on ebay maybe for 20-50 dollars. and profit margins never go to 3%, because there is new and better stuff coming all the time. every new model starts at a high price, and then keeps falling and falling in price.

that also give clues on what to do if you want to stay in business. you need to constantly improve the quality of your collection, and of the hatchlings you produce. manage to constantly improve, and stay in business. try to stay in market by continuing to produce the same, and you go down like nokia did. and the people that manage to stay in the market for 30 years are the ones that stay cutting-edge all the time. either by line-breeding double and triple combos to exquisite beauty, or by getting into new genes as soon as they can get them, or by diving deep into the 7-gene megacombos. or all of it combined.

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Originally Posted by MarkS

No there has NOT been a LOT of talk about market crashing. There has been the inevitable grumbling and griping of a relatively small number of very vocal butthurt individuals who feel a need to whine about the inevitable price drop of a very common and easily bred pet snake that happens to come in a wide variety of paint jobs all because they don't feel that they are making the kind of profits that they feel they deserve. This kind of grumbling has been going on for DECADES in the ball python world, and yet there still seems to be a market for these animals. Go figure.

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i also agree a lot with this post.

the market crashing / undercutting happens with the stuff that was brand new and hot 10 years ago. like when someone wants to sell his iphone1 or xbox360 on ebay, and realizes that the prices are not just down, but outright broken. yes that can be depressing when you look back at what you paid for it originally. but price undercutting wont happen like that to a beautiful super enchi super fire, or a GHI, or a nice super dream bee. at least not for the next few years. same with the auctions, they auction off quite nice stuff. but really, its stuff you could have gotten your hands on many years ago, theoretically, except that many years ago it may have been much too expensive for you.

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Originally Posted by MarkS

No there has NOT been a LOT of talk about market crashing. There has been the inevitable grumbling and griping of a relatively small number of very vocal butthurt individuals who feel a need to whine about the inevitable price drop of a very common and easily bred pet snake that happens to come in a wide variety of paint jobs all because they don't feel that they are making the kind of profits that they feel they deserve. This kind of grumbling has been going on for DECADES in the ball python world, and yet there still seems to be a market for these animals. Go figure.

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People are also very one dimensional. They either expect to go to shows and sell out, or they expect to post a single ad and sell out, or they expect the snake to sell itself.

The people making these grumblings are also trying to make a living off of it. And unless you've been doing it a while and people know your name, you won't make a living; you'll loose your arse.

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As with anything in the economy the cost that it takes to produce the good and the price of the good will converge over time. Remember when builders could sell houses for twice what it cost them to build them? What did they do? They over produced. Of course they did; that is what the going price incentivized them to do. That is where we are/have been with ball python morphs. Breeders can/have been able to sell baby snakes for much more than it costs to produce them. As other people have seen that they have said "we can do that to" the rate of production has increased. As supply has increased prices have naturally dropped. At some point the price will fall enough that it will not economically be "worth it" to produce more and the rate of production will decrease and prices will stabilize. I just think they will stabilize lower than most people think. Also there isn't one market. Each morph is kinda its own market. Different morph are farther along that path than others. This is seen as newer morphs come onto the scene and the pattern repeats. There are also a thousand and one other market forces at play, but that is my big picture take on the market spoken as a businessman that has an MBA from a top 20 school and considers himself to be a hobby breeder.

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Originally Posted by Kodieh

People are also very one dimensional. They either expect to go to shows and sell out, or they expect to post a single ad and sell out, or they expect the snake to sell itself.

The people making these grumblings are also trying to make a living off of it. And unless you've been doing it a while and people know your name, you won't make a living; you'll loose your arse.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I747 using Tapatalk

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True

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Originally Posted by TexanLady

See I don't mind selling animals at a very low price, but not to an individual buyer. I understand how that "crashes" the market, and in the long run any breeder that is selling dirt cheap to the public is only harming his/her own business. Along with everyone else's. If people want to sell dirt cheap (and I plan to sell all my single gene and hets for dirt cheap) why not do it to one of the big breeders?

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Why am I going to sell something to someone just so they can make a bunch of money off it? If I am going to sell something for cheap I do it not for my own gain not some one else's.

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Originally Posted by fishdip

Why am I going to sell something to someone just so they can make a bunch of money off it? If I am going to sell something for cheap I do it not for my own gain not some one else's.

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The only response you're going to get when people whine about your prices is "if it bothers you, buy it off me and sell it yourself".

Which is a good response.

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How many fake snake prices are also helping to drive the so called crashing?

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Originally Posted by fishdip

How many fake snake prices are also helping to drive the so called crashing?

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How many people lie about sales at fake prices to make people think they sell lots of snakes?

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I'd like to chime in on this one. I do breed snakes full time and live within this market, however I do not feel "crashing" is a word to use what-so-ever. This market is like any other, you just observe the flow of how the market works and you have to make it work for you. If wanting to make a profit, you can, it's not really even that hard to do if done right. I know how my investments work and within most other investments making you 3% - 7% yearly return, snakes are actually a fairly decent investment. Is it instant? No. Can it take years? Yes. If you plan your investment longer term and put together a plan for what you want to do, then you'd be much more successful. You can make your money back first year, especially if co-dom and selling, it's extremely possible. However, if you planned on a 3 year term, you're bound to be successful and will also have animals held back to make other combos which in turn also give more revenue.

A lot of people have their reasons on why they think the market does what it does. I see this time and time again of people talking about their lack of sales, yet I've never seen an ad for their animals, I've never seen their name in front of me, and I would have never known they even had an animal for sale until I saw them talking about their lack of sales. Sales don't just come, you have to market and work for them. You have to put yourself in front of people as much as possible and not limit your market to just the reptile community. The world is your market, not a niche community. People should think bigger and expect to have to work a little for their profits, have fun with it.

As far as where I see the market in 5 years, I see it expanded. 5 years ago, everyone was saying the same thing, yet I'm still selling snakes for a living. The market has a set of ups and downs every year, just like any market. I think people need to focus more on their animals and sales vs. the market, focus on their marketing and make it work in your favor, not by cutting prices, but by providing an amazing animal, with great service and help, educate your customers, and actually promote what you have for sale.

Five years ago when I was in the market for a pied males were going for $1200+ and two weeks ago I just purchased a male low-white for $295. I remember when pieds were $20,000. So many people are breeding pieds now that over time people competing to sell their snakes a little lower to get rid of them quicker contribute to their prices going down. I cannot breed for profit due to my time limitations but next year I hope to pick up a female pied and a female morph 100% het pied and make some cool babies for fun. But I would never drop their prices low since I will never be a big breeder needing to make room. And a low-white can produce high-whites and low-whites which makes them still worth working with. I think pieds still had the slowest price drop out of any morph. Morphs that were going for $10,000 a few years ago are only going for $1000 now. Some morph prices drop faster then others depending on how many people are working with them.

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Originally Posted by ben_renick

as far as where i see the market in 5 years, i see it expanded. 5 years ago, everyone was saying the same thing, yet i'm still selling snakes for a living. The market has a set of ups and downs every year, just like any market. I think people need to focus more on their animals and sales vs. The market, focus on their marketing and make it work in your favor, not by cutting prices, but by providing an amazing animal, with great service and help, educate your customers, and actually promote what you have for sale.

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exaclty!

http://ball-pythons.net/forums/image...quote_icon.png Originally Posted by fishdip http://ball-pythons.net/forums/image...post-right.png
How many fake snake prices are also helping to drive the so called crashing?



"How many people lie about sales at fake prices to make people think they sell lots of snakes?"

I don't understand this. Who uses fake prices? Why would anyone use fake prices? What is the logic in that?

sorry for reviving an old thread but i was reading something and it made a lot of sense to me and was on this topic and i remembered reading this thread ... long story short i thought it was worth the revival.

http://ballpythonbreeder.com/2009/04...price-animals/

Ben, spot on dude.

Everyone else: the people who are whining are selling small beans to newbies who want to get the cheapest snake they can to make millions. The people who are turning profit are buying snakes at full price because they're excellent examples, they're breeding selectively and looking for certain combos, and they're producing multi-gene animals. They're holding firm on their price and they're WORKING HARD... THAT THING GRANDPA DID, to put the snakes in front of as many people as possible with the best image and most polished and professional advertising they can come up with.

That said, without the small beans newbies selling single gene snakes of whatever quality comes out of the egg, there is no industry. Don't fill a thread cursing the lowballers - they ARE the market. The savvy folks don't worry about what those goons are doing. They're the guys being strategic while the lowballer goons are on the corner selling dime bags for a dollar a pop in profit.