Is the high price market dying?

[Adam_Wysocki]

I agree with that. I would not sell my het lavenders for almost any price. But that still does not mean het lavenders are worth the ridiculous price it would take for me to sell mine.

Maybe not worth it to the general public, but if you did get that ridiculous price for them, they would be worth that to you and to the buyer that purchased them ... and in then end, the buyer and seller are the only two people that matter.

I believe that for every snake there is a buyer out there ... selling a snake is a matter of the seller and the buyer coming together and agreeing on terms ... anything beyond that is just background noise as far as I'm concerned.

-adam

[Adam_Wysocki]

no one buys snakes for more than 2000$ from what I have seen, except the huge breeders

soooo not true ... you'd be amazed at the people that spend big $$$ on snakes and they aren't big breeders ... just ordinary people.

The ball python industry is a lot larger than what you see on internet message boards.

-adam

[JLC]

The problem is that emotional value is a subjective measure for which there is no real equation to convert into a static dollar value. I can understand setting a price point in you mind that you would consider (I do the same with our collection), but economically speaking, the actual value can only range between the lowest accepted bid and the highest refused offer (or in short-hand, what the market will bear).

Whether or not emotions are being used by a seller to set a value on a specific animal or item doesn't change anything I've said. "What the market will bear" applies to a range of like products...not to an individual piece. If the seller refuses to let it go for less than $xxx then that is its value. Because no one is going to be able to get it for any other price. If the seller is willing to be "talked down" to a lower price...then the value was never that high to begin with.

The reason I advocate an animal registry and documentation of morph lineage and quality is because it woud normalize industry averages, and reduce the number of excess low quality animals that ultimately devalue the nicer specimens (for example - the drop in price of spiders in correlation with the increasing number of lower quality spiders).

This part, I really don't get how it has any relevance to what I said at all...but thanks for sharing.

[J.Vandegrift]

Your right that you can charge whatever you want...but since I have been on here...no one buys snakes for more than 2000$ from what I have seen, except the huge breeders....

I am a very small breeder and have spent well over 2k on many different snakes. You are way off on that one. Just 2005 I payed 7k for a pair of het lavenders, 3k for a pied, 2k on a pair of het caramels, and about 2k for a female lesser. All cash deals. I have a friend that just payed 7k for a few snakes a couple months ago. I have probably spent about 30k in total over the last few years and I know there are MANY others like me.

[jkobylka]

The ball python industry is a lot larger than what you see on internet message boards.

-adam

Quoted for truth. For some people a glimpse at the scope of this industry would blow their mind hole. There is no one angle to look at it, or one price to go off of. :eek::eek::eek:

Justin

[N4S]

I'm sorry to say this but from a customer standpoint I hope it's dying.

[kavmon]

I am a very small breeder and have spent well over 2k on many different snakes. You are way off on that one. Just 2005 I payed 7k for a pair of het lavenders, 3k for a pied, 2k on a pair of het caramels, and about 2k for a female lesser. All cash deals. I have a friend that just payed 7k for a few snakes a couple months ago. I have probably spent about 30k in total over the last few years and I know there are MANY others like me.

ditto for me too!

i'm just a hobbiest with a spare room, i've spent well over 2k on single animals.

people spend money on alot of different things, some are golf crazy, 30k bass boats, 25 k harley's, customs, 75k on drag cars, 15 k on home theaters, etc. for some of us it's reptiles!!


vaughn

[SatanicIntention]

I'm sorry to say this but from a customer standpoint I hope it's dying.

And I'm sorry to say, but I resent this comment. I don't want small hobbyists like myself to get in a financial black hole because their breeding and selling prevents them from making any money, even just to support their snakes(feeding bills, racks, electricity). I don't want Ball Pythons to become like Bearded Dragons or other money-pit reptiles. I don't mind spending what money I can afford on a nice snake(morphs or hets), and have it pay for itself through breeding and selling the offspring.

Even if it does become a money pit, I'll just keep them all and not sell a single one! I want prices to stay where they are, especially from a customer's point of view, because I want a return on my investment. I just want my snakes to support themselves and possibly give me a little extra money here and there to buy that special snake that catches my eye.

[ctrlfreq]

If the seller refuses to let it go for less than $xxx then that is its value.

I'm not disagreeing that the price an owner puts on the animal represents it's value to them. Economically speaking however, such an amount would not be considered a viable "actual value" should the owner decide to leverage or protect the animal's value (getting the animal insured for example). In that case it would break back down along the lines of how much does it cost to reproduce or otherwise acquire another, just like it does for your house, car, or the Van Gogh painting you might pick up on a whim at Christie's auction house.

[WingedWolfPsion]

I think a registry has been a long time coming, and I agree that one should be set up. There's always the question of 'who will run it?'
It's a lot of work to set up a registry organization. I DO think if you set it all up properly and legitimately, that people would buy into it just as they do the AKC.
The only problem I can see is this: Who determines what a high quality animal is? Purebred dogs have closed lineages. In the majority of cases, you can only do registration with bred lines, and not with simple genetic morphs. Closing a 'breed' means no more out-crossing...I don't think anyone's far enough along with any of the ball python 'breeds' to want to close the door on outcrossing yet.
What makes a spider produced by NERD higher quality than one produced by that guy down the street who just picked up a spider and bred it to a really nice import he grabbed, and got really neat looking babies? The quality of a morph is determined by its appearance, no? NERD breeds nice looking spiders, but that doesn't mean someone who picks up a less attractive spider and crosses it with a unique-looking import can't produce really good-looking spiders.

I don't think you can register 'spider' as a 'breed'. I think breeders can develop a reputation for producing a certain look in their own lines, but then what would be the point of registering them? You have people saying "I have NERD line male that I'm crossing with this ch female"...the end result isn't NERD line anymore, but does that make it lower quality? Not if it looks really spiffy.

There is no standard for what these morphs should ideally look like. That's clear in the thread on pastels, too, where you have two big lines that have a different look, and people tend to like both...some prefer one or the other, but the popularity of both is strong.

Is a spider better with a highly reduced pattern? Or maybe with a really strong and busy pattern? High white or low white? It depends on who you ask.
Stronger yellow is good? Not if you prefer them to be more orange, or more brown.
What determines the quality of a co-dominant morph? In most cases it's the result of crossing a normal with a morph. The results can vary tremendously.

Who determines quality? In my opinion, the buyer determines quality (apart from obvious issues like freedom from outright defects).
Obviously people wanted those lower cost spiders.

The price comes down because people breed the animals and produce more of them. Higher numbers available mean more competition among sellers. People aren't having trouble selling spiders--only selling them for more than buyers want to pay now.
If your spider is higher quality and worth more, than people will pay more for it. If they will not, then it ISN'T worth more, regardless of how you feel about its quality. If you're producing a higher quality animal, it has to show--buyers will decide that. They will pay more for it if it really is better.

This is not something that the people who are 'flooding the market' are doing wrong. They saw a demand, and they're supplying it. This is natural competition. Businesses generally hate competition, but I don't understand the idea that the competitors are doing wrong for competing.

In an ideal world, people would pay top dollar for your animals, preferring quality over quantity, and they would agree that your quality is better.
If they don't...frankly, they don't think your quality is better, or they never could afford them to begin with and wouldn't have bought from you anyhow.

I don't think there's any valid reason to be angry because someone else is offering something at a lower price, that's the way competition works.

If we're going to do registries for ball pythons, it will be after some lines are established that have a unique look achieved only through breeding, and those lines are then closed to outcrossing. That's going to be a long while down the road.