Nice rant John! I'll be curious to find out at an upcoming show if you and I have ever talked face to face before and don't realize it, because I'm at a lot of the Atlanta Repticon shows also. I'm also almost always at the Dixie show over in Birmingham AL if you ever make it over that way. I know a lot of repeat shows bring the same crowd back for a lot of it, but there's also always new people coming into the hobby too. There's also selling X person an animal, and a show or two later, maybe the next year, they show up with a friend of theirs and tell them "meet John, he's who I got mine from that you like so much" and before long, they've bought one from you too.

I definitely get what you mean about having eye candy on the table and totally agree. I think at Tinley I was a little surprised at how much people stopped to take a second look at the anery brb's.

I do think there are a couple of different price caps, really entry level, first time (or close to it) and total impulse buying I think caps around 100$, but for people who have been keeping them for awhile and a little more experienced and serious reptile pet owners, it seems like that price cap is up closer to about 300$. I'll use hypo brb's for example, hopefully they stay on a slow decent in price as they come down, just like everything does, but personally I think when they hit 300$ (and maybe even 350$ considering the popularity of brb's and coloring of hypos) it's really going to expand the market a lot because I think there are a lot of people who will be willing to spend that for one as a pet. You could be right about the BP world causing some of the low balling effect, that get's into a market that really involves a lot of undercutting and backstabbing to make a sale sometimes. Go to a big show on setup day, or even on the morning before a show opens and watch how crazy some of them get running around trying to figure out everyone elses prices before pricing their own animals ...but that's a whole different rant! lol FYI, I do also have a few bp's myself, there's just too much fun to be had mixing genetics with them.

Good to know y'all seem to understand where I'm coming from for the most part!

Charlie

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