Super High Dollar Morphs

[Brandon Osborne]

I paid around $4k for my pair of het pieds back in 2003. I don't ever remember pieds being $50K each. Maybe $50K for a pair. Heck I remember the first year they were made available.lol....back when all we had proven were albinos and maybe pastels. VPI was still working on proving Clowns. My how times have changed.

And wow.....$17K for a tri-stripe and there are that many of them?! We have the only 3 Pewter Pieds in the world that I know of......what are they worth?

[Wh00h0069]

It is simple supply and demand. High dollar morphs are very rare, and are an investment.

[MitsuMike]

What's not to agree with? If I have a snake that I KNOW someone is willing to spend $15,000 for, then why shouldn't I price it at that? You mean to tell me that if you knew your animal would fetch that kind of money, you'd come here and put it on the market for $1500 just because it's more "fair" or something?

Sooo....the high prices are bad....but you don't like to see the prices drop?

To your first statement. Lambos, Ferrari's, ZR1s go for ridiculous pricing. But people still buy them. My point was, seemingly people don't get it, was the animal really WORTH that much. I proved that it was in fact with time and investment BUT to counter the point many other hobbies put more time and effort into things and charge much much less.
Now like I already said (I repeat myself alot) it all comes down to supply and demand not "fair".

To your second statement, you misunderstand and seem confused. So I will help you out. Saying something is "sad" doesn't mean agreeing or disagreeing. It is what it is, sad. And I say this because people who spend over 5K on an animal and in 4 years 100+ other people have the animals and it was worth not even half of what you paid for it.

And thank you Angllady for proving my point. This market will crash, for better or worse, and the example you gave is great. Now if the market will bounce back again, no one really knows (I hope it does, I like the reptile industry much to see if go). But I do see the BP market falling in suit with the bird example you gave.

[papa wyrm]

I paid around $4k for my pair of het pieds back in 2003. I don't ever remember pieds being $50K each. Maybe $50K for a pair. Heck I remember the first year they were made available.lol....back when all we had proven were albinos and maybe pastels. VPI was still working on proving Clowns. My how times have changed.

And wow.....$17K for a tri-stripe and there are that many of them?! We have the only 3 Pewter Pieds in the world that I know of......what are they worth?

It's just a guess lol, that probably includes hets. There's only one person in the country with em a of now though. You get the point...

[WFReptiles]

What every one fails to realize, or just doesn't know, is that those top breeders that end up with that awesome looking new morph like the Toffee Ball are paying top dollar amounts for those animals. We are talking $100,000+ for a said new morph. And that's not even knowing if its a passable trait. Some breeders have to co-own the snake to be able to afford the cost of the animal. Do you think that Brian paid 10k for the first Pinstripe? I can assure you it was way more than that. What about the Lavender Albino, Platy Daddy or even the Spider?

Also once a-pon a time, only about 10 years ago, Pieds were going for around 50k.

Back in 2004 when the Spiders just really started hitting the market I traded a female Pied 70% white and 7 Normal sub adult females for a male Spider. Look at spiders now....$200 for a nice male w/ no head wobble.

[WFReptiles]

Well said, and if you look it as a long time investment and even just as a passion for an animal and hobby that we love, which I am assuming most of us here are, it's going to pay off eventually. For those that just wanna make quick bucks, you should buy stocks.

[loonunit]

I think everyone said it already. People DO buy snakes at those prices--but it's mostly big breeders buying from big breeders. And they don't typically do it on a lark at a show.

And I think there's more than adequate documentation of the price drops in this thread. Prices have dropped astronomically even just since I started watching in the last 2-3 years. Some of that is the recession--don't forget the recession! Ball pythons aren't exactly necessities!--and some of that is the ENORMOUS over-production of popular morphs like pieds and bumblebees and pewters and lucys. How many piebalds total were there in the ENTIRE WORLD in 1997 when Pete Kahl proved them out? 20? 40? How many do you think there are now? 500? 1000? 2000? It's not amazing that people like MorphKings undercut the price--it's kind of amazing that pieds are still hanging tough at $750-$1300.

And what does THAT tell you? That SHOULD tell you that there are dozens, if not hundreds of people out there who are willing to pay $1k for a ball python. In the middle of a recession. And I bet you there's hundreds if not thousands who are sitting out there sighing and say, "man, I wish I could afford a pied. Well, not this year, in this economy, and not at those prices. Maybe when they hit $400-$500..." So pieds will sit at $400-500 for a long, long time...

Because that's what "supply and demand" means: if somebody is out there who will pay it, then that's what is sells for. There are only so many people out there who thought it was worth paying $2k to add pieds to their collection, but meanwhile there are dozens of breeders making pieds. So the price dropped. But it'll never really drop to corn snake levels... because ball pythons only hatch 5-8 eggs a year, and sometimes not every year. And there are lots of people out there waiting for that price drop, who will stabilize the price at the next level for a while.

But expensive snakes keep popping up! Why's that? Because people are making new combos. 3-gene snakes just became possible for small breeders like me... but meanwhile the big guys are making 5-genes snakes. And NERD doesn't even KNOW for sure what he has...

And every time I bring my pieds out, somebody in the back gets a twinkle in their eye. That twinkle is somebody mentally rearranging their life a little bit, so that one day they too can have a snake. Maybe even a crazy snake like THAT... And one day soon they'll buy a het pied from me and raise it up (increasing DEMAND)... and then one day after that they'll buy a pied to pair it with (increasing demand FURTHER)... and then one day they'll be helping to lower the price by breeding their own pieds (increasing SUPPLY).

So the market will bottom out on pieds eventually. But it'll keep growing OVERALL as long as we keep inspiring new people to come into the hobby. Because supply and demand are BOTH INCREASING. Sometimes supply outpaces demand, but neither one is decreasing. New people aren't the problem--new people are the reason the ball python market EXISTS.

[TheSnakeEye]

Wanna know what I dont understand? How lets say NERD comes out with a morph called xyz and decided to sell some xyz offspring. They'll go and list the males for lets say $20,000 and the females for $15,000.. Yet when you get to the more common seen morphs suchs as butters, and pieds, the females are more expensive.

[loonunit]

Wanna know what I dont understand? How lets say NERD comes out with a morph called xyz and decided to sell some xyz offspring. They'll go and list the males for lets say $20,000 and the females for $15,000.. Yet when you get to the more common seen morphs suchs as butters, and pieds, the females are more expensive.

Because when a morph is new, having that one male allows you to make lots of xyz gene-carrying females by crossing with your current females. You'll need those girls to even get the project started, and that one male gets you there quick.

When a morph is established, well, now you want to actually make some supers and some combos. And the total number you can make is limited entirely by the total number of xyz FEMALES you have.

And females take longer to grow up, and can only produce one clutch per season. (Unlike the stud you started with, who might have sired 3-10 clutches.)

[loonunit]

Wanna know what I dont understand? How lets say NERD comes out with a morph called xyz and decided to sell some xyz offspring. They'll go and list the males for lets say $20,000 and the females for $15,000.. Yet when you get to the more common seen morphs suchs as butters, and pieds, the females are more expensive.

Oh AND, those butter and pied and enchi females (good grief! have you seen the price diff on enchi females lately!??) may sell for more as hatchlings... but just wait until they are 2 or 3 years old! A fat 2007 pied female may not have lost value in the last three years... and a 2008 butter girl may actually have GAINED value.