Why are ball python morphs so expensive?

[Freakie_frog]

I see what your saying, but its not a matter of what they look like its a matter of how many there are. Ya spiders still look exactly the same, but everyones brother, sister, aunt and uncle is breeding and selling them, they are not going to be able to stay expensive. You cant take the supply and demand thing out because thats what it is, pretty much in purest form.

So if the supply is low the price is high ? right
Supply is high but demand is low then the price low? right

So what happens when supply is high and demand is high??

[mainbutter]

I remember seeing Lesser's for 25K back in 2006 and people whine when they are over 300.00

I know people like to reference the whole supply and demand thing but I really wish people would get that out of their head..I mean do spider's looks any less AWESOME today than they did back in 2002 or do Pied's or any morph.

Why would you want people to get supply and demand out of their head?

Forgetting supply and demand is what made people make poor investments with low rates of return.

I wish people WOULD think about supply and demand. Once you realize that this hobby (ball pythons specifically, not herpetoculture as a whole) is essentially a collector's hobby where anyone with enough money, time, and brains can print multiple copies of their own.. Well it doesn't take a genius to figure out that if you doubled the number of available insert rare baseball card here, the lack of rarity makes it less desirable.

Ball pythons are not about how good an individual animal looks. It's about how rare a particular set of genetics is. While it's true that often it makes an animal look beautiful, the focus is less on beauty and more on "oh, that looks DIFFERENT!". This is the downfall of the ball python hobby prices.

If you want prices to remain stable simply on good looks alone, go get into panther chameleons or the morelia genus of pythons, or just about any species that isn't explicitly defined in herpetoculture as being dominated by dozens of morphs. They have their own fluctuations, but we haven't seen the price of an individual "look" drop by half every two years. They've been around long enough to stabilize in prices, and you can even see price increases through selective breeding of animals if you're able to find some quality parents.

If you want to work with a species with relatively stable prices AND work with animals "worth" thousands of dollars, work with animals that are a challenge to successfully breed. The value you add by skillfully caring for your animals goes above and beyond a few sterilites, paper towel, water, and throwing in a thawed rat every week. Boelens pythons are a great example.

[MakiMaki]

The price of snakes is very much driven by supply and demand. Originators of the currently common morphs paid dearly for single unusual snakes, gambling that one would reproduce, prove to be genetically reproducible, and that others would want it. For every morph that did make it, there are many stories of hugely expensive snakes that never proved out or died after import. When a snake did prove, the breeder would be foolish to give away his investment of years of time and money, and we're talking prices of $50,000 to $100,000, and I've heard rumors of more. If he couldn't convince someone else that they were worth all that, he'd be out of his investment, but if someone REALLY REALLY wanted one and he had the only ones around, he could demand a high price. As more breeders got involved, the supply increased and those that REALLY wanted one could afford one. With time, the supply increased exponentially, reaching a lower demand point and more buyers. Now, as morphs become commonplace, they are approaching the price of normals. A yellowbelly male or het albino male is practically the price of a normal now. Just a few years ago, yellowbellies were selling for more than $6000 because that's the price that the seller and buyer could agree upon.

Many people refer to their snakes as living art. I know I do. Widely available common morphs have a huge range of quality. Like art, each snake is unique. And, when a breeder clearly takes the time to create something beautiful, unique and healthy, it shows and can command a higher price from discerning buyers. Likewise, that breeder probably spent more money obtaining higher quality animals, put years into selectively breeding for traits and, feels, rightly so, that his animal is worth more than the rest. It's still supply and demand if you can recognize quality is in much shorter supply and fulfills a huge demand.

[BbyBoa]

So if the supply is low the price is high ? right
Supply is high but demand is low then the price low? right

So what happens when supply is high and demand is high??

If supply is high and demand is high, it could possibly stay about the same, but in some cases due to competition "like in the snake business" prices could also fall.

[Freakie_frog]

According to supply and demand models price only drops when the demand falls below the supply..and yet I haven't seen a drop in demand for pieds, albinos, bee's, BEL's or Banana's and yet every year the price goes down which must mean more and more people just don't like them..

According to the models I'm seeing Price dosen't drop with supply it drops with demand..

[muddoc]

While it has been mentioned many times in the industry, and many times in this thread, supply and demand are a big driver for the prices of Ball Python mutations. With that said, lets take a closer look at the supply end of that statement to better answer the OP's original question. The comparison of Bearded Dragons to Ball Pythons is a poor for one main reason: Supply. A Bearded Dragon female can lay up to 35 eggs, versus a large clutch of 13 for a large Ball Python female. That is almost a 3:1 ratio, meaning that you can produce 3 times as many new Beardie morphs in the same amount of time. A large colony of Bearded Dragons can be kept in a much smaller space than can a colony of Ball Pythons that would produce the same quantity of babies. Lastly, Bearded Dragon females have a much higher possibility of laying year after year versus a Ball Python female that can potentially take every other season off. That being the case, it is possible that the ratio of offspring between the two species is closer to 6:1. This same event has also occured with other species of snakes, such as Retics, Burms and corn snakes. These species can lay very large clutches of eggs, and in some cases, more than once per season. Those factors allow for the "manufacturing" and distribution of new morphs a much quicker process, thereby allowing the SUPPLY to increase much quicker.

With all of the above stated, there are many other reasons, which could probably encompass an entire book on the mathmatica and economics of reptile breeding, that contribute to the rise and fall of prices on mutations of different species of reptiles. However, I hope that some of what I wrote about above will help to answer your question of why are Ball Python morphs so "expensive".

[Freakie_frog]

If supply is high and demand is high, it could possibly stay about the same, but in some cases due to competition "like in the snake business" prices could also fall.

So it's not supply and demand it's the breeders racing each other to the bottom because they are scared that they can't compete...

So like I said our business doesn't fit supply and demand it fit's the garage sale model. basically the "that's been sitting there for a while and I don't feel like keeping it any more so make me an offer"

[Jay_Bunny]

Also, years ago, there were not as many people in the hobby as there are now. In early 2007, I wasn't even thinking about breeding snakes. Then I got into ball pythons and here I am a little over 3 years later, and not only am I breeding snakes, but my sister is also into ball pythons and will be breeding later this season, and we've gotten 2 of our friends into getting snakes. This hobby is expanding and a lot of people are getting into breeding. The more breeders there are, the less expensive the animals get.

For example, when I first got into ball pythons, a pied was going for over 2k. I just saw a female yesterday for about $800. That is over a 50% drop in price in 3 years. I purchased my 2007 pinstripe female for $600 in early 2008. She's breeding for the first time this season and if I get pinstripes, I'll be lucky if I can sell them for $200 since I am a new breeder without much reputation. Breeders without much reputation tend to sell their animals at a lower price than the big guys because we can't rely on our reputation to sell our snakes. You hear of a snake from NERD, you know that snake is going to be of good quality and you tend to trust the bigger breeders. Then you get to me and I'm a new breeder only into my 3rd breeding season and what do I have? How do you know my hets are really hets? I have few sales to help prove what kind of breeder I am. So what do many breeders like this do? They lower their prices. A novice snake keeper just starting to get into morphs will sometimes choose to go with a cheaper snake over the more expensive one because they don't know any better. (Not saying my snakes are not good quality, or that I'll sell them for dirt cheap, but you get the idea)

Just my two cents.

[Freakie_frog]

Also, years ago, there were not as many people in the hobby as there are now. In early 2007, I wasn't even thinking about breeding snakes. Then I got into ball pythons and here I am a little over 3 years later, and not only am I breeding snakes, but my sister is also into ball pythons and will be breeding later this season, and we've gotten 2 of our friends into getting snakes. This hobby is expanding and a lot of people are getting into breeding. The more breeders there are, the less expensive the animals get.

For example, when I first got into ball pythons, a pied was going for over 2k. I just saw a female yesterday for about $800. That is over a 50% drop in price in 3 years. I purchased my 2007 pinstripe female for $600 in early 2008. She's breeding for the first time this season and if I get pinstripes, I'll be lucky if I can sell them for $200 since I am a new breeder without much reputation. Breeders without much reputation tend to sell their animals at a lower price than the big guys because we can't rely on our reputation to sell our snakes. You hear of a snake from NERD, you know that snake is going to be of good quality and you tend to trust the bigger breeders. Then you get to me and I'm a new breeder only into my 3rd breeding season and what do I have? How do you know my hets are really hets? I have few sales to help prove what kind of breeder I am. So what do many breeders like this do? They lower their prices. A novice snake keeper just starting to get into morphs will sometimes choose to go with a cheaper snake over the more expensive one because they don't know any better. (Not saying my snakes are not good quality, or that I'll sell them for dirt cheap, but you get the idea)

Just my two cents.

Exactly MY POINT!!!

Why is it that demand has gone up supply has gone up and yet prices still drop every year.. It doesn't fit any successful business model in existence..Look at cars the number of people driving cars every year goes up and yet car prices are at an all time high.. when people stopped driving big ole trucks the price fell, that fits loads of product no interest price drops..

[mainbutter]

According to supply and demand models price only drops when the demand falls below the supply

I'm going to have to disagree with this statement.

"Demand" is a more complex variable than "there are 10 people out there and each one wants to buy 1-3 spider ball pythons, for a total market demand of 20 spider ball pythons".

However, it can be summarized in a very simple idea: How much money the market is willing to spend on a product.

If there is $10,000 total in the market that people are trying to spend on snakes, and only two are available, you could make the case that the value of each snake is $5,000.

However, if there are 20 snakes available, and the total amount of money that consumers are willing to spend toward snakes is still just $10,000, you will see prices per snake fall.

Prices per animal will fall with increased supply, even though demand remains constant.

The good news is that with constant demand, you get constant flow of goods and cash. This is the lifeblood of an economy, and especially a hobby based on sales.

I would agree that demand has remained constant, and even increased, in the past couple years for ball python morphs. However, supply has greatly outpaced demand. Breeding animals can have exponential increases in supply, and there is no way that any hobby can support an exponential increase in the amount of money that hobbyists in total are willing to spend, even with newcomers joining the ranks every day.