Nerd has developed some form of a standard for grading their snakes. They advertise them as graded and put down starting price for the lowest of the grade. Does their grading system meet up with all the owners of snakes? While Kevin (Owner of Nerd) is a top dog in the industry and I am sure he has developed his method not only off of personal preference, but market research as well, he still can't speak for everyone. I'm sure other breeders have developed their own way of judging quality as well. It would be great if some basic guide line was created in judging snakes, but to do that you would have to get a lot of people onboard with it and actually have them all agree! If you don't get the Barkers (Owners of VPI), or any of the other major breeders, to come on board with the grading system then the integrity of the grading system becomes suspect. For us a lot of it has to do with lines of morphs. For a basic pastel the Graziani line is very well known. Lemon pastel is a distinct line from Nerd. The Bell Blond pastel is also another lesser known distinct line of pastel. Having one of these lines of pastels that can be traced back to its origions is what I think can make a significant difference in the breeder quality of the snake. Also 5 different lines of Axanthics exist with only 2 of them known to be compatible with one another when breeding. A significant portion of the ball Python community considers the VPI line of axanthic to be superior, but I'm sure others may think the other lines have qualities than make them better and possibly down the road in the creation of double and triple morphs one of the other lines could prove to be a better choice or the only choice in the creation of something.

It all comes down to the fact that so little is truely known about snake breeding compared to dogs at this time and we are learning new things every year! Every year new morphs are created. How many new breeds of dogs are created every year? Dogs have a lot of other proven traits that they can be judged on that take them beyond what you see. These beyond what you can see traits in snakes probably exist, but the actual study of them and seeing if they are genetic really hasn't even begun!