Because females do breed, your selection will be much more limited with a small budget than if you were buying a male. Here in St. Louis, you could pick up an average Pastel for that. Maybe a lower quality Yellowbelly if you were fortunate. You might even be lucky enough to find a so-so spider for that. That's about it.

Males on the other hand. You could get a nice pastel, a decent yellowbelly, a fairly nice spider, occasionally even a nice mojave, sometimes a woma, once in a while you'll see an all right cinnamon for that.

Unfortunately, if you want high quality snakes that will produce high quality offspring, you will pay a premium for them. Now, on the other hand, this time of year, you can sometimes find really nice big normal females that have recently dropped clutches and are up for sale. This has is benefits and it's drawbacks. For one thing, since the animal is mature, you already know what you see is what you get. And there are really nice normals out there that bring a lot to the game when combined with the right morphs. On the other hand, you have no way of knowing if that female will be ready to lay again in the upcoming season. You might invest in her, feed her up, and try for eggs, only to get nothing. It's very frustrating, I've done it myself.

Your best bet might be to start small, with an inexpensive normal to learn the in's and out's of care, and save your dimes for a really worthwhile female later in the year. You can usually find some sweet deals around the holidays, just like for anything else.

Gale