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!