Quote Originally Posted by ctrlfreq View Post
This can only be within reason though. I can very easily justify buying say, a creamsicle (pied x lav albino) instead of producing it, because even if I started with a visual morph of each, it would take a minimum of 2-3 years, to produce one with double-het offspring. Even then, my chances of popping one out on the first try are fairly slim mathematically speaking, and I have to house, feed, and otherwise care for all the offspring during this time.



Yes, but this is where the business sense comes into the equation. People who are making dominant crosses are obviously looking for short-term gains, and are comparable to day-traders. Those who are planning for the long term will be investing more in recessive genetics, which will hold their prices much better due to supply.



This point I disagree with completely. The 1 in 16, 32, or 2048 odds are exactly what will keep the market up in it's "mature" phase, just like it's kept the price of Ferraris well above their Ford counterparts.

If anything, one only needs to look into the markets for purebreed dogs, cats, horses, or any other animal for which the market would be considered mature to see that rare animals will continue to bring in the big bucks well after the markets drop for the common breeds.
All of these are valid points, but you are missing one thing: you are looking at this from a breeder's perspective. Not every buyer cares about setting up racks and rodent colonies, etc just to own a morph. They want to put a morph in a display cage in their living room and the whole notion of an animal being worth more because of 1 in 16 odds versus 1 in 8 odds is completely irrelevent. It is the look of the animal and the demand for it that will set the price, not the specific genetics. Look at albinos: one recessive gene, 15 years later it is still above $800 on average.

If this whole notion of a "I breed, sell to you, and you breed" thing could sustain itself, the prices of a lot of the morphs would have stayed the same. They didn't. They dropped. Simple economics tells you that anytime the supply of something increases without a proportionate increase in demand, the price drops.

Talk to "everyday" type people at shows. They are very impressed with ball pythons but can't justify setting up shop in their garage just to own morphs. They've seen the dropping and prices are shrug it off, saying they'll wait until they are within reach. The ball python market is going to be HOT when the combos and such are under $1000....and it should stay there for a while.