Paying for possible hets

[Jabberwocky Dragons]

Many people don't want to do this.
All I have is time.

Recessives are definitely a patient man's game but I greatly prefer them. The only codoms in my collection are focused on pairing with recessives.

I see what you are saying about the more expensive and new mutations, but that is just way to much risk for me. As I am mostly interested in the recessive gene it is hard to see where a ph that did not prove out would fit into my plans, and maybe that is the issue. I mos def make sure about the parents and that the seller guarantees 100% get in the animals I am looking at. I think if I produce possible hets in the future I will definitely sell them at normal prices with the chance that the buyer can get lucky.

It all depends on your situation. Here's a zero risk situation:

You have pieds and want to produce banana pieds. Banana het pieds are too much for your pockets so you are resigned to purchasing a regular banana, crossing it with your pied, getting guaranteed hets, crossing back, and eventually producing the banana pied after a couple crossings. For slightly more than the banana alone, but much less than a guaranteed het, you can get a possible het and have a chance cutting this time in half. There's absolutely no risk as you would not be any further behind than with your originally intended banana only purchase. You may be out a hundred bucks or two for the chance of saving a couple years.

First I want to preface this with I am fairly new to the hobby of ball pythons. I was just curious as to what your opinion about paying more for possible het animals is? I am in the market for a het pied and some people seem to want crazy money for a possible het animal with one co dom gene. I understand you may be able to rake in some reward if the odds hit in your favor, but not if you end up paying more for the animal. In my eyes possible hets are generally a miss in a breeders plan and would be available at discounted prices. With the buyer being the one with everything to lose you would think they would be more reasonable. Maybe I just don't understand where these breeders are coming from, and would appreciate enlightenment.

This isn't really correct. Possible hets aren't a miss in a breeders plan but rather what happens when a het is paired up with anything but a visual. Not everyone, especially when starting out, can pair up hets to visuals for every breeding. Even the big guys will do het x het crosses for the chance at something truly incredible. I consider any "hets" produced from a female that was bred to anything but the visual morph in the past to be possible hets and a breeder should label them as such or at least disclose the past breedings. These potential hets could be considered a breeding miss due to poor planning.

They are always available at discounted prices... less than the price of a guaranteed het. As others have mentioned, sometimes it's not worth the trouble to mark up or even label possible hets or even guaranteed hets as anything but normals. I sold all my guaranteed het pied males as just normals and ph ultramel males as normals or pastels. I held back all the females