If you are buying the animal as a pet, knowing the correct price for the animal vs it's actual genetics or how genetics work is more important. Now if you want to start breeding and selling to others, knowing the genetics is 100% necessary. Fortunately though, with ball pythons, once you learn the different genes well, you are good to go. You can, for the most part, identify different genes in different combos and be able to say with a certainty that a specific snake does or does not have a specific gene. It's not like dogs, where you can breed two different breeds together and get a mutt that likes nothing like the parents. A Pastel ball python will always look like a Pastel ball python. A Spider ball python will always look like a Spider ball python. And when you mix the two, Pastel x Spider, the combo (Bumblebee) will always look like a bumblebee.