Possible retained sperm making me crazy..

[JonnySOL]

Hello folks, this is my first post. I have actually attempted to start others before but since I couldn't quite see how to post pics, I gave up. That, by the way, was regarding Morph identification. But that's way off topic. Anyway... Now I have a question I'm afraid I know the answer to. But I thought I might get someone to tell me what I want to hear...
Last year, around the summertime, someone I met had a small BP collection that they needed to find a new home for, as they were moving immediately. Now, I love these situations... Almost as much as I love "Baby on the way and wife needs BP room for nursery". Now that's the best.
Again I digress... So anyway, they ended up giving me miscellaneous young morphs, mostly single and double gene stuff that I had zero use for but I happily fed and sold them cheaply. But they also gave me three adult females that I definitely wanted; a proven pewter, and a proven fire genetic blackback. Also I Firefly that had not been bred, despite being 2000 grams or more (maxing out my 2000 gram scale at the time). Now there's reasons I mention all three... They claim to have NOT paired any of them that year (2016). And that the two proven ones laid good clutches the year before (2015). Sorry for the over-clarification/redundancy... I assumed the firefly was just not up to size in 2015. So a few things support the claim that they didn't pair them. One, I paired my lesser Huffman male with the pewter, and she laid in August. They actually were only together about a month, then she ovulated. So she did produce one pastel Huffman. I also put my pastel clown with both the fire blackback and the firefly. Well the fire blackback also ovulated and laid after only a few months with the clown. I have exact dates. Just not handy. So... After this very long and fascinating setup, here's what happens that I need help with: the clutch from the pastel clown x fire GBB produced five eggs. All hatched. I got three fireflies and two pastels. If I posted a picture this is clear as day. So I'm elated to have all these lovely 100% het clowns and some are genetic blackback I think (another very tricky topic)... Then it hit me. All five carry pastel, two of which are fire pastel. Not one normal or fire. So either I got a very lucky clutch... Or, she was still retaining sperm that MUST have been from some combination of super pastel. Of course the original owners are long gone. If I knew what she was paired with the year before, I would assume they would say a super pastel. Why I don't know. So my actual question is. Would anyone believe these are het Clown? There's no way I can sell them as het or even possible het... There's no category on Morph Market for "Highly Unlikely Het". Man I wrote a novel.

[Trisnake]

I would personally find it harder to believe they lied, when you could have just gotten lucky with the odds. Why wouldn't they disclose the breeding? Do you have any reason to believe they would be dishonest besides the fact of what the babies turned out to be?

I applaud you for being cautious because yeah it's a possibility... but I think it's much more possible you got lucky. If you sell them I would include that you bought the female recently and that the previous owner claimed not to have bred her before, but there is a very slim possibility she may have retained sperm from an undisclosed breeding as you aren't the original owner and have no way of knowing with absolute 100% certainty.

EDIT: even if they HAD bred her I would still find it more likely that she was impregnated by your pastel clown male, simply because retaining sperm is already somewhat rare. If nothing impossible popped out of the clutch then I would have confidence in the previous owners testimony.

[JonnySOL]

Well that's very encouraging. Really I don't think they would have lied about not pairing any of them. Why would they?! I was still taking them as is. And the fact that the other two ended up being sired by my snakes also indicates they were not likely paired prior... I just want to be up front if I sell any. And the female firefly I'm holding back... Well I guess then I will know! THANKS!!

[JonnySOL]

Just to be clear... since I know we are all very familiar with statistics... So 100% of the people who replied agree that these are het Clown. Awesome.