Guys, I remember back in 1991 when myself and a couple other people invested large amounts of money for the first available Andean milks by way of sealed bids. This was advertised as a breeding investment which would easily allow us to make back what we had initially invested into them. The sealed bids came to $1000 each for these snakes, and I ended up getting 1.2 of them. The price stayed here through at least 1993, but then in 1995 as we who had initially invested in them and were getting ready to produce our first clutches, the price dropped to $275 each, and even to $250 if quantities were purchased.

The reason? The initial $1000 price tag was expensive at the time and no one wanted to pay it, so the original breeder ended up sitting on large numbers of these and still no buyers. As those of you who have kept Andeans know, these will eat you out of house and home. So in order to sell these animals that were now being raised to make room for other projects (the albino Hondurans had just hit the market and were priced at $3000 each), the price got dropped to a level where these could be moved out.

Those of us who made the initial investment (mine was $3000 in 1991) were bummed. A couple of the other initial investors like myself did not even make back our initial investments. I do not harbor any ill will towards the original breeder, it is just one of those things that happens.

I certainly sympathize with both sides of this issue, but it is not the first time the milks have done this, and probably won't be the last either.

As they say... "supply and demand"

Scott Ballard

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