Personally I think getting a ~$2000 BP as your first one isn't a great idea. As a beginner you are likely to make mistakes. I sure did. I'm not saying that the life and health of a normal is less valuable than an expensive morph, but in the unforseen event that the animal gets sick, injured, or dies at least you won't be out a bunch of money.

It sounds callous to put it this way, but that is how I saw things when buying my first BP. There were some pretty and expensive morphs I liked better, but I wasn't about to spend all that money without making sure I was capable of keeping a normal happy and healthy for at least a year. That year is almost up, the normal is doing great, and now I have confidence that if I buy an expensive morph I know how to take care of it.