To the major ball python breeders

How much would a breeder who is just starting out sell a spider ball python, spider het albino, spider albino, het albino, and albino on an individual basis. I am hoping on getting these morphs on the road, and selling them. how much would you guys say i sell some of these puppies for? I just dont want to go overboard in pricing nor do i want to get ripped off. i just want an accurate price range for some of theses animals. thank you.

(NOT a major BP Breeder by any means)

I would first go with how much they are worth to you. Would you want to keep any, or move them on?

Secondly, you'd have to gauge the prices that year. Co-doms tend to drop pretty significantly as the years go by. Co-doms het for stuff tend to hold a price a bit higher than normal co-doms, but only a bit. Recessives tend to stay pretty well even, but even that is changing.

You have to basically see what you see, and base it on what you think is fair compared to other prices.

so i see spider albinos for $5000. should i sell for $4500 or $5000. thats what im really interested in knowing.

I agree that it's what the animal is worth to you. There will always be certain breeders that can get more money than a small breeder for similar animals. I feel that it might help if you keep great records and know the bloodlines of your stock. Offspring from say snakes bred by NERD, VPI, RDR ect may command more than offspring from "Bob" on KS. As Heather said you have to guage the prices for what they are when you are selling. The animals are only worth as much as someone is willing to pay for it.
To answer the question from the second post....as a consumer I would really check pricing and reputation of the seller. If a big breeder has one for $5000 I would not pay the same amount from an unknown source. I see people getting into this business probably with dreams of Ferraris in their heads. The people that make it that big are few and far between.

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Originally Posted by pythontricker

so i see spider albinos for $5000. should i sell for $4500 or $5000. thats what im really interested in knowing.

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Well if the prices for these morphs are still this high then yea.If you try to get ahead of yourself with dollar signs in your eyes you are going to miss out on the main reason we keep snakes.The love of working with them :gj:

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Originally Posted by pythontricker

so i see spider albinos for $5000. should i sell for $4500 or $5000. thats what im really interested in knowing.

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There's no way to know if they'll still be that price by the time that you produce them. You'll need to watch the market when you produce them and charge what they're going for at that time.

If the big guys came in here and told you how to price your snakes it could constitute a price fixing scheme. :colbert: The best thing to do is keep an eye on competitor pricing. This is refered to as market research. The big guys don't want small breeders to under price their snakes as that would cause the market price for all breeders to have to be reduced. Thats how competition works! See what you can find out about competitor pricing and put yourself in the ball park with them maybe just slightly lower due to you don't carry a name. But do not go very much lower and do not pay attention to expo prices so much as competition there is direct with breeders litteraly side by side.

So I must be out of the loop and /or just the new guy..
What the heck ya spending that kind of money on a Python for?:O

Mine cost 79.99 which was a bit high I was told. Why would you spend that kind of coin? I must be lost ???

I know I see some of the coloring is pretty cool looking but come on... Remember I am a new one to this..

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Originally Posted by WaRocker

So I must be out of the loop and /or just the new guy..
What the heck ya spending that kind of money on a Python for?:O

Mine cost 79.99 which was a bit high I was told. Why would you spend that kind of coin? I must be lost ???

I know I see some of the coloring is pretty cool looking but come on... Remember I am a new one to this..

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I'm new here, but read enough to understand a little bit.

Some of the pythons morphs that are available are brand new morphs. From what i've read, breeding morphs hasn't been around that long, and again, a lot of them are newer and hard to find. Some of the new morphs don't have many adults yet because they have only recently been developed.

I paid $70 for my ball python as well, but i'm gonna be buying more this summer for $300-$400 for a breeding pair. Some of the morphs like Albinos don't cost as much because they have been around for a while and aren't as hard to make.

The snakes i'm getting are 100% Het Albino, meaning when they make babies in a few years, they will be albino babies. 1 Albino is worth more than 2 100% Het Albinos, so when the albino babies come, i'll make the money back from my snakes. (Years later of course, and It probably won't cover the time and money I spent keeping them, but I will get the satisfaction of having my own Albino ball pythons.)

*If i'm wrong about any of this information, please correct me, but that's what i've gathered being around the forums for a couple of weeks.*

There's no way to really tell in advance the value of the snakes that you might/will produce. Your best bet is to produce them and then find out what they are selling for at that time, combine that number with the knowledge of how much they are worth for you to keep them and you'll have a good start.

Justin

Produce what you want and don't worry about what future prices will be.
Don't expect to see the same prices 2 years from now as you do today.
Look at what mojaves were 2 years ago.
Breed and keep what you like. Any that you sell is just the icing on the cake.

Something to consider also in the pricing is the cost just to make some of the morphs. Particularly the double and triple morphs. In the future expect to see quadruple morphs. Years of breeding go into it and these guys are playing odds games.

We will use a Snow as an example.
To make a Snow you need an Axanthic and an Albino or at least the traits. If you breed an Axanthic to an Albino (most breeders do not sell breeding morphs like the Axanthic or Albino for cheap so you will probably get snakes less than a year old which means you will have 2 years or more tied up in just raising them to breeding age.) you will produce normal looking snakes that are refered to as double hets. Then you have to breed the double hets back together once they reach a breeding age which will be in 2-3 years or more. Now when you breed these double hets back together you have a 1 in 16 chance of each egg being a Snow. It may take 3 or more breeding cycles to hit those odds or you could get lucky on cycle breeding cycle number 1. To make snows every time you need 2 snows of the same axanthic line. To get them old enough to breed together you will have another 2-3 years or more. So by the time a breeder is able to start breeding his own snows regularly you are looking at a minimum of 6 years.

Other double morphs do not always breed the same double morph when bred together. An example of this is the bumblebee. Breeding 2 bumblebees together produces the following odds of offspring.
Each egg has the following odds:
6 in 16 of being a Bumble Bee (Spider X Pastel)
3 in 16 of being a Killer Bee (Spider X Super Pastel)
3 in 16 of being a Spider Ball
2 in 16 of being a Pastel
1 in 16 of being a Super Pastel (Super pastel is when both sides of the co-dominate are present)
1 in 16 of being a Normal

Pretty good odds for nice Ball Pythons, but still not perfect. At least 4 years are spent to make two Bumblebee's that are of age to breed and you still don't have perfect odds of constantly producing Bumblebees.

Also if the government ever gets off its rear and bans the importation of wild caught ball Pythons you could see a jump in base prices of captive bred ball pythons. This is a soft spot with a lot of breeders and should be reserved for debate elsewhere!

It might just be me but it reminds me of the painted up hermit crabs.. Designer snakes so to speak. Next you can die them the color you want by injecting them with some chemical that affects their natural genes and gives them a color..

I dont know its just not for me I guess...:snake2:

I saw albino spiders at the Tinley Park show for $3,500.