Quote Originally Posted by JohnNJ View Post
Please keep in mind that this group is a very, very small segment of the world. Most people don't see the value in a morph that you do. They also have no idea of the cost involved in breeding. Most people have no intention of breeding.

The larger portion of the pet snake buying public wants a pretty snake for a certain price. You go above their set price and they walk.

And experience and reputation does matter. I would be willing to spend more if it's an established breeder vs. little Joey who just started.

I have spoken to a few breeders that sell their snakes at less than the market price. Their reasoning is that they have to move out what they will not use in their breeding program and charging a few dollars less allows them to move their inventory quickly. They said they make it up over the long run.

YMMV
Your post doesn't hold water. If the people you are talking about just wanting a pretty snake, and they don't know what kind of financial risk and hard work go into producing some of these morphs, that means we should drop the prices down for them? I don't know what goes into making a plasma t.v., and I just want a pretty picture to look at for cheap. But I don't see Sony dropping their prices down to $400 for me. But there are plenty of t.v.s out there I could get for the small busget I want to spend. And if this was truly that large of a percentage of the market place, yellow bellies, fires, sables, cinnies, axanthics, etc. wouldn't have been sold out every year to date at the higher prices. If they want a pretty morph from me, but only have $100 I'll send them to Wes for one of his cal kings. There are plenty of pretty snakes out there for the lower budget pet market.

And how do your breeder friends makeup the thousands of dollars they are throwing away by reducing their prices to below the already deflated market prices? By never buying rodents that are small enough for hatchlings, and not having enough rack space to keep them for longer than a few weeks after they hatch? Those are the only things I can think of that would make some of that lost money back, and it seems like a pretty crappy business plan when they are dealing with live animals.