Like what everyone else has said, I generally shop for the snake. I've got animals from breeders big and small and often times, I've found that smaller breeders take the time to look for QUALITY animals. For example, I'm REALLY picky with fires. Say I look at Big Breeder's website and see that they produce a lot of fire but they are of so-so quality. However, I look on Small Breeder's website, and their fire is to-die-for simply because they took the time to look for quality breeders. I'm not saying this is always the case, but I see it pretty often. As long as a seller has a good rep on BOI or on the forums here and I love their animal, I will buy from them before I even look at big-name breeders.