Brian, I feel your pain. I've been interested in mandarins for years and its the same thing. The first I saw was at a show and it blew me away, first by the beauty then the price at $400 for a baby. Wow. That price held for a few years and I summoned the nerve to purchase a baby male which I raised to a fine 24" beauty. This was before I built my snake room and as rottin luck has it, it escaped into my basement never to be seen again. Damn.
It took a while to get over that loss but I eventually bought another pair of babies for $500.(the price is dropping) While they are doing fine, they grow slow so when a deal came up on a mated adult captive bred pair I jumped on it. $750 total.
So now that I have a couple eggs cooking from them the price has dropped down again and while some still ask $400 for a baby, you can get males for half that. What can you do, right?
$400 snakes will never sell in pet stores or be a quick or easy sale but at $200 you'll see more and more available to the occasional pet snake owner. Now I'm expanding to red tailed green rats. I hope they will stay less common for a while.
Mike.

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