Quote Originally Posted by Jay_Bunny View Post
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..