Quote Originally Posted by Rickys_Reptiles View Post
If Grant wanted to he could put together an approved pricing list. Then anyone who vends at the show sells their snakes for the same, or more than what they have agreed to. Sure, some people would be against that idea - but it would help to normalize the market. I would agree to it.
i live in Germany, and basically its a weird cross of democracy, capitalism, and socialism, so i know a bit about how to tinker with the free market if necessary.

and i dont really believe that would work. it would only hurt that specific reptile show and people would just undermine and undercut it. Obvious ideas would be to give some sort of kickback under the table. like, you buy a morph that is worth 50, but the event forces the seller to charge 100, so you pay 100 and get a 50 dollar gift card, to be used online or when purchasing at any other event.

one idea that could work would be an import tax of 20 dollars for any python hatchling or snake imported into the USA. That would make the dirt cheap mass imports of tens of thousands of normal hatchlings from africa unfeasible, and suddenly the big chains and the big distributors will look at locally bred BPs and morphs with different eyes. Thats the big price undercut, in africa you pay between 5 and 7 dollars for a nice healthy but unfed hatchling, you put 2000 in a big box and get them to the USA. In the USA they are then at 20 dollars a piece and get distributed to the big chains. No breeder in the USA can possibly compete. these shipments happen all the time.