Why We Are Idiots For Using Kingsnake.com To Price Our Animals

[PythonWallace]

I'm confused.

Some of you seem concerned that prices are too high.

Yet others seem concerned that prices are too low.

Perhaps the motivation behind our/your deep concerns should be brought out and examined.

Is it money, profit, getting mine because I've done the work, that is the motivation here or is it get back at some assclowns, or is it purely philanthropic?

Motivations matter.

For a lot of people, it's probably a lot of the above. I'm saying that about prices dropping too low, too fast, not prices being too high. I've always been into snakes, and I wanted an albino ball from the second I saw one in Reptiles magazine. I wasn't upset that the prices were way too high for me. That might have even added a little to my coveting. I waited patiently until I could afford a pair of hets, then in '06 I closed my money market savings and bought a a male albino and a couple of normal females. I knew that being a recessive mutation that had held it's value well for over a decade, I would get to finally own the goal possession of my childhood, and by breeding it, I would be able to make the same return that I would have if I left my savings in place.

I think that story illustrates a common theme or scenario for hobbyists that really love the animals. Breeding to break even or even turn a small profit is the only way we can afford to get into the hobby in the first place.

I will be hatching my first hets this season, and since my female het is a stubborn feeder, I won't be hatching my first albino until 2010. That's four years of raising up five snakes, standard fecal floats, not to mention the $2k original investment. So am I in it for the love of the animals, or am I in it for the money?

And what about the breeders who are the first to import a project? Some spend $100k to import a couple of projects, with one of them proving to be a cool looking, $50,000 normal, or a $60,000 yellow belly. Then people complain when the project that worked out costs $25k to buy into, and when you can't buy into it for under $1,000 a few years later. Do we have no appreciation for the people who take such huge financial risks to introduce new mutations for the rest of us to be able to one day work with? There are plenty of snakes out there for people who only want to spend $100. We shouldn't be an any hurry to bring the prices into their affordable range as quickly as we do. If they really love an animal, they will either wait a decade, or save every penny to get their hands on one. Because like me, a lot of them will want to breed it to try and make some of that money back. So when we see all these expensive morphs dropping under $1k, that's when every kid and his mom buy them up to breed, and the next year is the end of that market completely, through these guys breeding the hell out of them to their female craigslist rescues and dropping the prices to $90 so they can sell out in two weeks, because they don't have the space or the budget to take care of the snakes they have, much less 12-18 babies.