Advice for purchasing a BP?

Hello, I'm new to the forums and will be a new owner of a ball python in a few months. I was looking for advice on where to purchase a bp and what to look for when doing so. A pet store near me has several young bps for $70 each. This seems a little pricey to me and I'm a bit wary of getting pets from pet stores. I've heard some can be wild caught, and I would like to know their eating habits (I'm looking to feed thawed rodents).

What is the price range a ball python should be? What age bp would you recommend for a beginner? Where would I buy one? (I've heard local breeders or expos are good and reliable). Are there any things I should keep in a mind when looking for a snake?

Hopefully I can find a good location to get one! Thanks.

You can check out morphmarket.com, you can look for local breeders as well as search for certain morphs you like. $70 is on the rather inexpensive side, but you can definitely get good looking normals and some single gene morphs for that.

There are also reputable breeders on this forum who may be local to you.

Ideal would be if you live in driving distance to a good breeder. My second choice would be having one shipped from a good breeder.

I don't recommend buying from a petstore at all, and you also have to be careful at expos, make sure you purchase from a reputable breeder. Sanitize your hands between handling of different snakes. Change clothes after coming home, and wash them. To make sure you don't bring home any hitchhiker snake mites ! ;)

There are also some members on this forum who breed snakes. Perhaps you are located near one of them ..

Read this, it applies just as much to snakes purchased face to face as purchased and shipped.

https://ball-pythons.net/forums/show...g-Herps-Online

Pet stores are retailers and have to mark up the animals for business. Nothing wrong with this, but you will get a better deal from a breeder. I would never buy a normal ball python online, because shipping is around $50.
You can find normal ball pythons on Craigslist, but you never know what health they are in, and often people are selling them with their entire terrarium as a package.
Your best bet is a good breeder. I know I myself would sell normal hatchlings for $50 just to move them.


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Do not buy from a petstore unless you want your first ball python to die or at least have a difficult time nursing it to health. Ball pythons are in bad condition 90% of the time at petstores because most are not properly setup to keep a ball python in the correct conditions. There are some exceptions but if your new to ball pythons, you certainly wont be able to make that judgment. Plus, $70 for a normal I'm assuming, is way too much, most breeders are willing to practically give normals away. $25 is a fair price for a normal but if your willing to spend up to $100 you can choose from many beautiful single gene morphs. Of course they can go up quite a bit more depending on what morphs and how rare or how many are in the particular animal your looking to purchase.

By spring I should have many hatchlings to choose from. There are many breeders like me all over that do it as a hobby so depending on where you live, you may have a hobby breeder near you that you could get a far better price than a petstore and you will have a much better chance the animal will be in perfect health. Most hobby breeders take the health of their animals very seriously. You could also have an animal shipped from a breeder but if you think $70 is pricey then you will need to find someone local because shipping alone is usually $50-$60 so no breeder will find it worth shipping an animal out to make $10.

$25? Stop driving the prices down Rufretic, lol!
The only way I would sell a python for $25 is if I was selling mutiple snakes to one buyer as wholesale. You can’t buy one around here for less than $60, unless it is an adoption type situation or wholesaler maybe.


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Quote:

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Originally Posted by Godzilla78

$25? Stop driving the prices down Rufretic, lol!
The only way I would sell a python for $25 is if I was selling mutiple snakes to one buyer as wholesale. You can’t buy one around here for less than $60, unless it is an adoption type situation or wholesaler maybe.


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So sorry :oops:
There is no demand for normals around me. It’s all about supply and demand. I plan to wholesale all my lower dollar stuff in larger quantities though. So you might be right, $50 is probably a good price when selling an individual to the public. I’ve been trying to pair to avoid producing many normals or even single gene stuff anyway so hopefully I don’t have to worry about what normals go for lol.

I have GIVEN AWAY some snakes and hatchlings, such as lemonblasts, super pastels, even a pastel enchi.

BUT it was because of the home they found. In that particular case it was worth it to me, for where they ended up being. ;)

I have sold a few, for a VERY fair price. Right now I'm not willing to ship and since I live rural, I have to make it worth their trip.

The reality of normal pricing is $15/$25 at shows, locally on CL it will come down to supply and demand in your area and how long someone is willing to care and feed a normal.

Wholesale pricing is $5/$7 each as lot if lucky $10

OP at shows you will find single gene mutations for $75 or less however if $70 is pricey than think again prior to buy a snake proper equipment will be more expensive (starting with a reliable thermostat because burns are even more expensive)

Anyway you will find

Pastel $25/$45
Cinny $50/$75
Black Pastel $50/$75
Lesser $50/$75
Mojave $50/$75
YB $30/$60
Spider $35/$60

Etc

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Originally Posted by Deborah

The reality of normal pricing is $15/$25 at shows, locally on CL it will come down to supply and demand in your area and how long someone is willing to care and feed a normal.

10

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Sad but true. I didn’t want to be the one to shatter his hopes and dreams lol. But honestly, if you can get $50, you should. I know I sure would be happy too :rofl:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by rufretic

Sad but true. I didn’t want to be the one to shatter his hopes and dreams lol. But honestly, if you can get $50, you should. I know I sure would be happy too :rofl:

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I guess there is a high demand / low supply around here.
$25 would be very low. $60-$80 at a pet store.


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I don’t plan on breeding normals any way, as there are plenty of breeders in the USA


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Most people don't plan on breeding normals, it's usually a side product of the pairing. The more genes in the mix the lower the odds, but if you breed a couple single gene co-dominant morphs together you'll still get 25% normals. For example, this is the result of crossing a pastel with a pinstripe:

Percent	Fraction	Genes
25 %	1/4	Normal (Wild Type, Classic)
25 %	1/4	Pastel (Pastel Jungle)
25 %	1/4	Pinstripe (pin)
25 %	1/4	Lemon Blast

I have quite a few double or single gene females and single gene males so will get quite a few normals this year. I have a local pet store that will buy as many normals as I can give him for $15 each, he marks them up and sells them for $50, and I think our local Petco sells them for $80. At the shows the cheapest price is typically $20. Craig's List is a good place to get cheap or free snakes, I have a nice big beautiful normal female that I got for free on CL, she is breeding this year for the first time. I'm actually breeding her with a scaleless head male, hoping to get a scaleless head female to raise up so I can eventually get a scaleless ball python.

Personally for your first snake I'd wait for a local reptile show like Repticon. You should be able to get a variety of choices from multiple breeders and pick up something nice.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Deborah

if $70 is pricey than think again prior to buy a snake proper equipment will be more expensive (starting with a reliable thermostat because burns are even more expensive)
Etc

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I purchased a pastel banana BP for my daughter this past summer. We are fortunate enough to have a reptile specialty store near us, so finding equipment, supplies, livestock and advice was pretty easy. They do their own breeding and do consignment sales for local breeders.

Our local store will give you a normal BP for free if you buy the set up from them. We paid more than I want my wife to know for our pastel banana boi, but not nearly as much as we did for his habitat. We also made a few costly mistakes along the way. We purchased an Exo Terra glass cage which we will soon be replacing with an AP T10. We also purchased a cheap thermostat that we soon replaced with a Herpstat (so we could could have worry free sleep).

My point is that before you start worrying about purchasing your snake, you should start pricing your habitat. We had ours set up and stable for several weeks before we brought home our BP.