Actually the prices vary a lot and can change rapidly... For example, It could take 6-10 years to make axanthic clowns from scratch (double recessive). But once you have it you can breed it to itself and get all axanthic clowns. So the price could be really high for a short time and then crash quickly. New strikingly beautiful co-dominants sell really high when they first come out and come crashing down fast as people mass produce them. With new recessives some people hold on to the visuals and sell only hets for big money, dragging out the time to market. Most of the time more genes command a higher price, depending on how good they look. If some or all of the genes are not in high demand then the price is lower.
Now I believe that one of the major things that drives prices is competition. I've seen snakes sell for $1,500 consistently for a couple years, then some guy comes a long and decides he wants to get rid of his one and only crazy morph, so he sells it for $500. Suddenly everyone is trying to match or beat that price and it falls over $1,000 overnight. When you sell a high end snake for cheap on a site like Morphmarket you are actually hurting everyone. I've seen people sell so cheap they crash the market for that morph overnight and almost immediately breeders are forced to sell all of their adult breeders because it doesn't make sense to breed that morph anymore.
I've never seen anything as crazy as ball python price fluctuations. And that's not just ball pythons but all snakes. I've heard of people spending over $20,000 for a pair of snakes and once they grow them up and get babies the price drops to less than $200 before they can sell any! In my opinion investing in snakes is a huge risk, you have to do it for the love of the animals and if you are lucky you can make some money.
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