Hi Jeremy,
I thought I would bring this back to the top of the stack again. I have no problems with anyone respectfully disagreeing it is an important part of discussion….
I don’t recall the problem of scams and criminals being as large back in the 70’s and 80’s but then again I was just a kid and may not have noticed it as much. I truly think that the internet has not only giving us legitimate breeders a fantastic tool to use but it has also made the scam artists go global with their scams as well. Even as early as in the 80’s to mid 90’s there was no other place to sell your animals other then the local swap meet, pet stores or if you were lucky you had a few specialty reptile shops with in driving distance. Living in south FL I was always lucky in that respect with always having several dealers to barter between, but even then I was happy to get wholesale money for my babies to the tune of $35-40 per head on normal boas, $5 for baby corns, $7 for baby albino corns and a whole $10.00 if you bred snow corns as they were top of the Morphs back then. Oddly those prices on baby snakes have not gone up that much in the past 20 years, but Boa and Ball Python Morphs have reached the level of a second mortgage for one and I think that is a bit crazy.
One other point that you may have misunderstood from my post, I do love money too LOL, or at least what money can do is what I love and I find nothing wrong with breeders selling there offspring at the market rate. In fact if you fail to sell you snakes at market rate you will quickly become accosted by others LOL. Last year I sold my Ghost Boas (which were top bloodlines and stunning) at $1,100.00 each, not realizing that the going market price was $1500.00 each. I had two questions that kept coming up 1) (this one from other Ghost Boa breeders) Why are you selling them so cheap, your hurting the market (I only had 8 to sell) 2) (from buyers) Why are you selling them so cheap, is there something wrong with them!
I couldn’t win for loosing LOL, so this year I will stay closer to market value so the misconception of having low quality animals is not there and not to offend the others! I sell my snakes for extra money to buy new cages for more snakes, take trips to look for snakes and to buy more snakes that I want LOL. It also helps pay for the up keep of my snakes, so the sales are a must to be able to keep them.
What I do have issues with are the numerous people that will want to buy 13 pairs of adult boas, mind suck every bit of information from you that you may have gathered in 25 years of keeping herps and then try to flood the boa market with the babies that you help them produce. These folks normally have been in the hobby for about 2 minutes and show no respect for those who came before them. Those are the ones that I would like to see jump ship with the boa market coming to a level platform. Not guy who got into breeding because the loved the animals and now make some bucks on them as well, that is just good breeding.
I hope this long winded reply did not bore you all too much, I just wanted to clear that up. By the way Jeremy I love those motley boas and am going to have to pick one up in the next season or two.
Thanks
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Jim Hopkins "Hoppy"
Hopkins Holesale Herps
Hopfam1@aol.com

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