Where is the morph market heading?

[Doxster]

Spot on RichardA. If you have Ball Pythons just to make money, you won't have them long. You have to love BP's first and if you make any money over and above what it costs to accomodate and feed them, that is a bonus.
When I hatched the first Blackeyed Leucistic in 2002, I received genuine offers of up to $250K and a rumoured offer of $500K from Japan. Where is that same snake now? I still have him, because money was not the reason why I started keeping Ball Pythons.
I am not a rich man either who could afford to turn down a price like that, I am a disabled pensioner who struggles to pay the bills incurred with keeping and feeding quite a large number of snakes, but the snakes are my hobby, they need to be cared for and the rodents that go to feed them have to be looked after, fed and cleaned out. That is why I can get out of bed in the morning and endure the pain of looking after my charges.
A few people have made the 'big bucks' from breeding Ball Pythons but they are few and far between - and they were snake lovers first!
Eric Davies

Wow turning down offers like that must have demanded a good amount of self disciplin!

[Slim]

Buy the Morphs that peak your interest...enjoy your BP's....enjoy the people you meet in the hobby...the rest will take care of it's self.

[patenaud]

Power to those who have made it their main source of income regardless of whether they're in it only for the money or for the love of the animals. As long as their animals are well taken care of, honestly represented and customer service is good then business is business.

Having said that, I'm on the "you have to love them first" band wagon as well but only because I know how much work actually goes into taking care of the animals on a daily basis. With a full time day job, it's allot of work coming home and having a "second" job. It would be really hard to do without the "love" and fascination I have for these creatures.

Patience is a virtue... I paid 6k for my mojave. The year after, they were worth 1500. By the time I produced them they were worth 400-450. I only needed to sell 15 to recoup the initial cost of the snake. To me, that is still a good investment. Heating and feeding costs aside, I only need to sell another 8 mojaves at today's prices of 250 to realize a 30% return.

I thought allot about it and I decided to mostly stick with base morphs. This is a second "hobby" income for me and I firmly believe that most people would rather by a spider and a pastel for less money and try to produce their own bumblebees (until bumblebees are selling for spider prices)....which brings me to the future of retail. I think that when bumblebees become cheap enough for pet shops to sell them to the general public they're going to fly off the shelves. People like bright colors...so I might be wrong on the really bright combos, time will tell.

As far as the market crashing? It's all relative to what you want to accomplish. We're almost sold out and have not advertised on the internet at all....

My .02 cents. :-)

Denis
DenJenn Reptiles
www.pythonregius.ca (site not updated in a while)

[DrLew]

You gotta be in it for the love first.....market second.

AMEN!!!!!

[mainbutter]

How is the Cornsnake market doing after 40 years, its still thriving

Playing with ball python genetics is here to stay, not even worried one bit for the market, if you are only in this for the coin, best you invest somewhere else.

Personnaly, I can't wait till balls are only worth a few hundred dollars, it will weed out the greedy who are only in it for the money.

Exactly how I feel. My dream for this hobby is for it to pay for itself, and nothing more. If I'm able to produce animals which I can perhaps trade for housing, feeders, and more animals, that would be just heaven.

[crsaz]

personally I think the "market" is heading away from ball pythons and moving more towards retics, but I dont really care where the market is headed because I just want to breed the morphs that interest me, I would rather buy some cinnamons and wait 2 years and produce my own super cinnie rather than shell out the 3k for one. If I ever produce cinnies I would sell them for half what they are going for at the time. I know people say low balling is going to ruin the hobby but I think its the only way to weed out those who are in it for the money and lower prices to where the average person could afford what they want

[mainbutter]

personally I think the "market" is heading away from ball pythons and moving more towards retics

I've been wondering this lately as well.. I could see the market for SD retics 10-20 years down the road being pretty huge. On top of that, there is the added challenge of trying to get some of the morphs currently only in "full-sized" or dwarf retics crossed into SDs. Many people get turned off of giants, but we're less than a decade into having CB super dwarves, which I am sure will jump in popularity in the coming years as supply begins to increase.

However I don't think that the market is necessarily "heading away" from ball pythons, people who are interested in ball pythons will always be interested in ball pythons(with a few exceptions of course, there are always exceptions). I don't think that the people on this website who keep and breed BPs are just going to say "enough of this, I want to sell all my pets and buy some retics!" In addition, the number of base morphs for BPs is INCREDIBLE and there is no limit to what people can do with selective breeding. Just because $50k+ snakes might become a thing of the past does not mean that the market is dying, in fact I think it's a sure sign of growth of the number of people in the hobby.

[crsaz]

I think that retics re becaoming more and more popular everyday, but it will be along time before the retic market surpasses the ball pythons. it is still possible especially with morphs like the orange ghost stripe wich is a dwaf

http://www.newenglandreptile.com/ava...uct=527&cat=25

[Python Dreams]

Just relocated to a new house and finally got up and running with the internet and stumbled upon this thread...
My opinion on the market is that it is great... If you like producing morphs or combos for the fun of it, then there is an endless supply of different colors and patterns to work with at very cheap prices and complete breeding projects can be actually achieved without having to remortgage your house. If your in it for money, then you either have to invest a little and plan ahead with combo females and triple combo males to create some crazy rare Balls or produce large numbers of double combos and there bi-products which are single base morphs in even larger numbers. Still getting a couple hundred dollars a snake is decent if you donot have to hold onto it for long periods. A little bit of something for everyone.... And if you love snakes... What could be better?
Eitherway, you have to understand that every year the price is going to come down and put that into your game plan... The days are over of producing a few snakes and making hundreds of thousands of dollars, but that does not mean they are in anyway a bad investment.
As for Crystals, I have advertised a Super Pastel Special, but I believe that Anthony was preselling Special males....
I have personally produced 2.2 Crystals, 0.1 Paradox Crystal, 1.1 Pastel Crystals, 1.0 Super Crystal and 1.0 Pastel Super Crystal... I know that BHB has produced one Crystal male, but has probably produced more since. That is 10 that I know of so I am sure there are a few more.
The debate is up in the air as to wether their is Mojave involved in the Super Crystal, but a few like BHB and TSK have seen them in person and believed it did have Mojave involved. When I talked to BHB at Anaheim Brian said that he was surprised by the Super Crystal and it is possible that since we are relatively early on in the genetics of Balls and we might need to talk to bird or Finch breeders to see of maybe something similar with people that are alot further along with the understanding of genetics... Now personally, I didnt even know people bred Finches and it could be very likely that Brian was just screwen with me, but that is what I was told and only breeding will tell!
Finally as for the name "Specials", I called them that because they look closer to a normal than anything else... I thought of calling them Bakers because I thought it would be very funny and kinda cool to have "Super Bakers", but an overly serious investor got her wittle feewings involved and did not want that! I have never heard of anyone calling a Special a Crystal and it would seem pretty comical to me since the Crystal got its name due to the clearish look they have as babies... I think I have heard of het Crystals, but who knows... Seems odd and funny that everyone is referring to "Specials" as Crystals (yet havent told me) and little old me is holding out sticking strong to the "Special" name!
The cool thing is I just had a Pastel Crystal crawl out of the egg on New Years eve and one crawl out today on New Years Day!!!! With maybe some Super Pastel Crystals coming out in the next day or two... Sounds like I accomplished so much more instead of calling them Pastel and Super Pastel "Specials" like they really are!

[Python Dreams]

As for the retics, I love them, but unless Super Dwarve retics really maintain small sizes I dont see them surpassing Balls... They just get too big!