Starter BP Questions

[AmericanTacos]

Hello! So I'm finally able to get a Ball Python. It isn't my first, I've owned several before, but I've had to give them away due to unfortunate moving circumstances. However, when I owned them, I knew nothing about morphs besides the existence of bananas *sigh* oh, young me. Well, I've done as much solo research as I can without my head exploding basically, but I can't plan further without asking specific questions Google doesn't want to help me with.
First and foremost, I do not plan on breeding right now. While I do want to breed as a hobby in the future, I am only looking to get one snake right now. I do not currently have the time or funds to breed. I want to get a female visible morph (please excuse my incorrect terminology as I still don't fully understand it), but am not able to spend over about $300. I have looked and looked, but unfortunately, my desperate love of Ball Pythons has stumped me. I love absolutely every one I see, and am unable to look at things from a breeder's perspective rather than an uneducated lover's perspective.
This leads me to my questions:
1.) Is there a specific starter morph that I can eventually get paired that will produce more valuable offspring? Ex - if I were to get a female Super Mojave for about $250, and then eventually another Super Mojave male for about the same price, and they produced Blue Eyed Lucy's, would that be a good investment?
^ I'm not sure the value of any morph offspring, and also I'm not entirely sure if Super Mojave's ARE BEL's...
Please also give me an example of any two morphs that cross to create valuable offspring, whether it's in my budget or not. I'm not very familiar with which morphs are worth money, or how they are produced. It's more for personal interest rather than a breeding plan.
2.) Are all Ball Python morphs compatible? I've read most Axanthic lines are not compatible with each other which makes me question how many BP's ARE compatible. Are the Axanthic lines special in that they're incompatible or is that a common thing with the morphs of the BP world?
3.) I just have a few terminology questions that, when typed into Google, only give me BP sale listings, so... What is a proven breeder, and what does "scaleless head" mean?

I'm so sorry for such a long post, and I'm sure most of my questions are making experienced breeders shake their heads in exasperation, so my apologies

Thank you in advance for any answers!

[SDA]

Breeding ball pythons is not going to quickly make you money. You have to spend a great deal of time, effort, and money to make anything and even that will not be recouped for years. There are also the facts that morph popularity changes rapidly and what was a $1000 can be a $100 snake in no time as the industry gets saturated and tastes and trends change.

That said, I would not want you to get discouraged from eventually breeding ball pythons but coming in with the assumption that if you get certain moprhs that you will have geese that lay the proverbial eggs is just not the way to approach this hobby.

If you are ready for the commitment of a ball python (they live upwards of 30 years) then find one you like, take your time and ask breeders questions, watch youtube videos of top breeders like BHB, and above all else don't enter into this for the money.

I highly recommend watching this from Matt Gambrel at Olympus Reptiles. He nails on the head what it means to breed ball pythons as a business

[AmericanTacos]

If I was planning to start for money I would just get everything I need now and go for it lol. The problem is I haven't found a snake that I like over all others because I love all of the one's I've seen so much. I'm not even entirely sure if I ever will enter into breeding and if I did it would be mostly for hobby, and I would still be just as happy if I came out with net profit.
I'm simply wondering if there is a best "starter morph" in case I ever do want to breed. Either a morph that can breed with many other morphs to make several combinations, or a morph that can breed to "lay the golden goose egg". Since profit doesn't matter to me, successfully breeding the unlikely combo would just be a happy surprise, not a desperate goal.

[Joci]

I'm not an expert on morphs, but from what I've heard a lot of people invest in high-end males with a combo of nice genes and then buy a lower-end female such as a normal or a normal het *insert morph here* to pair with the males. That way, you can produce amazing morphs, but only the males that you buy are expensive. (Experienced breeders correct me if I got something wrong )

[BluuWolf]

You will for sure get more bang for you buck if you start with a one or two morph female then eventually get a male with lots of gene. Males cost less so this way makes it to where you can get some really nice morphs for less.

As for what two morphs will make any specific more expensive morph, basically anything will do that lol Like you could get a spider female and pair it to lesser pastel boy and make lesserbees and bumblebees that are worth more then the parents lol. But as for your specific pairing you listed (I know it was hypothetical but I thought I'd point it out just so you would know ) I wouldnt pair a Super Mojave to a Super Mojave lol the super means that all of the offspring will be mojave so the only things you would ever get out of that are mojaves or more super mojaves. Mojave does have the Blue eyed Lucy complex which means the super form is a blue eyed Lucy, but its not one of the more pure white BEL super mojaves have purple like heads and the rest is white. If you wanted to get a Super Mojave and eventually make BEL I would get something with like mystic or butter in it as well as maybe some other morphs just to add some flavor Butter and a few other morphs also have the BEL complex and will create a BEL if mixed with Mojave. Butter/Lesser + Mojave creates one of the whitest BEL. And Mojave and Mystic create a Mystic Potion which is always beautiful!

As far as I know all different morphs are compatible with one another, it's just when you mix different lines of the same gene that they can be incompatible like with Axanthic and I'm pretty sure some lines of Hypo and Albino aren't compatible but I don't know which right off the top of my head sorry. I do know some supers are either fatal (Like spider) or cause genetic issues (Like super butter/lesser Can have big eyes) and stuff but youd have to look more into genetic deforities and such to know exactly what.

As for the terms, proven breeder means it is an adult animal that has bred and produced offspring before. Scaleless Head is a morph where a few scales are missing on the ball pythons head and the super form makes the fully scaleless ball python. Very expensive lol.

I hope this helps!

Sent from my LG-D690 using Tapatalk