I could be wrong... but it seems to me the "superior" quality snakes may not even be available to newbie breeders, instead probably being traded among top breeders who know each other and work together, long before they even make it to the newbie. Like someone mentioned... what you see in the ads are generally seem to be the lower quality snakes, until you get toward the end of the season/start of next season when breeders start selling off their holdbacks they don't really want/need any more. (That was how I got my pastave! Dumb luck I saw the ad the day it was posted, and contacted the breeder on a whim/impulse.) But I might be wrong. This is generally how things went in the rat world... where most of the quality breeders (meaning those breeders producing show quality animals that WERE winning) only traded/sold their best quality animals with other quality breeders they knew and worked closely with.