Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I'm only posting a new post because soon the old post will be too far down the page...

This pertains to the argument about pieds and their prices.

Pieds may be dropping in price now, but wait until new combos come out. I bet prices will shoot right back up.

I bet when someone creates a super cinny pied, or a super pastel pied, or a clown pied...prices will sky rocket again.
Why? Because everyone will want to make one!

And just wait until there are enough crystal balls to start making crystal-pieds.

Yeah...so prices are a little low at the moment.
They'll get back up there.

You've also got to factor in the state of our economy as well.
People are paying upwards of $3 a gallon for gas...
with all the gas guzzling cars out there...it makes some people's budgets pretty tight...

Gas to get to work...or a pied female?
Not everyone who's buying these snakes has a cushy job that allows them a lot of money to spend on snakes. I'm getting my first morph this month...
$545 N.E.R.D line Lemon Pastel.
I wish I could be buying a Mojave, or a Spider...but I have to start small.

And as I have said a few times before...wait until there is enough supply to start selling to pet stores.
There will be high demand and low supply...again.
People want new. They want exotic. They want things no one else has...and they will pay top dollar for it.
Spoiled teenagers will ask daddy to buy them a pied, or a pastel for their birthday, and out comes the Amex.

Relax, breed some snakes, sell some snakes when you can...
and you'll see...it'll be fine.

Just my opinion.
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-Man fears the beast in the Wolf because he does not understand the beast within himself.

I am very optimistic as far as the ball python market goes. BUT I am so freaking tired of hearing this they haven't showed up in pet stores yet argument. I have managed many pet stores in my day and this is not a valid argument that prices are going to be better.

If a pet store is selling a pastel for $400 chances are that they bought it for $200 so thats an even biger drop in price and speaking from experience they probably won't sell in most pet stores for $200 when someone can buy a normal for $100 or less. MOST people buying a snake at a pet store are buying their first snake or see these snakes purely as pets where as morphs cater to breeders or aspiring breeders. There are not many people that are going to spend $2500 on a spider ball python with no intention of breeding it.

Reptiles as a whole are about 1% of retail stores sales. There really is not a reptile pet market at least not in pet stores. Sure there are exceptions like local herp stores etc. I am still waiting for somebody to explain to me what a morph in a pet store is going to do to the market. Sure people will see it and show interest and think its really cool but that isn't going to in most cases turn into a sale, especially when you get over $500 or so.

The ball python market as it stands is one of the only "markets" where your main customer is also your competitor. All we have is breeders selling to other breeders so tha they can someday produce what you just sold them. That is why you see volatility. As your sales increase your customers are also increasing the supply further flooding the market and all you can hope for is that even more people catch the breeding bug but now you compete with the customer you sold to and so on.

So after all that you are sitting here and thinking "What is this guy talking about, I thought he said he was optimistic about the market?". Well I am and the sole reason why I am optimistic is because we are working with some absolutely freaking amazing snakes here. Not only do we have countless morphs to deal with but we also are working with small manageable snakes that almost anybody with half a brain can care for properly. That in itself helps us when we try to sell these animals to people who are just starting out. I for one don't see piebalds getting to $2000 yet. Hell if they did I would be one of the biggest buyers. All in all everybody needs to sit back and relax. There is absolutely nothing you can do to control the market. People will always sell at their own price. All the whining and complaining in the world is not going to stop someone from selling something for less. Hell ask my wife whining and complaining doesn't keep me from buying these damn things so your whining and complaining isn't going to keep me from selling it.
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Jeff West
www.westreptiles.com

People pay $2000 for dogs with no intentions of breeding them.

If you want a snake to just look at, what better than an albino or pied or pastel.
Something that catches the eye more than brown and black?

I'm not saying these snakes are going to fly off the shelf like they $50 Ipods, but they will sell.
And chances are they will sell for quite a bit.

Pet stores might just buy pastels for $400, with the intention of selling them for $800.
And if that happens, and we are selling them for $700...
we're making more than we were before, and still selling for less than retail.

This is just my opinion.
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-Man fears the beast in the Wolf because he does not understand the beast within himself.

King the dog analogy is a good one I was thinking more along the line of the more exotic birds, such as macaws and african grey things like that. Im not complaining about the market it makes it easier for a poor guy like me to get my hands on something spectacular.
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Damian Macioce
www.strongholdreptiles.com

It's probably more accurate to compare to the birds. More of a select group. And looking at the birds a 1000 Macaw will sit in a store for years sometimes. It makes a question as to how high demand will be.
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3.4 Normal Ball pythons (Hoss, Little Man, Adam, Helen, Annabel Lee and the new girls who gets named when they eat)
0.2 Snow corns (Legolas, Eurydice)
1.0 Amel het charcoal (Orlando)
1.0 Hypo het anery het Amel (Antony)
0.1 Amel het Stripe (Cleopatra)
1.0 Caramel Motley poss het Amel (Flick)
0.1 Amber (Amberly)
0.1 Normal Cal King snake (Sidhe which sounds exactly like "she"
0.0.1 GTP (Kissy the Red)
1.1 Haitian Boa (Enkil and Akasha)

And bunches of furry pets

Very well put and i especially like that last part!

"Hell ask my wife whining and complaining doesn't keep me from buying these damn things so your whining and complaining isn't going to keep me from selling it."

For some reason:That reminds of a dry joke about another market...Why bars are recession proof.People drink both when their are celebrating and when they are down.
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Charles Glaspie

Tanstaafl:
"There ain't no such thing as a free lunch".
An acronym created by my favorite author Robert A. Heinlein.

LOL, thanks! I typed it the went back and read it and had to laugh, did I really say that? But it pretty much sums it up.
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Jeff West
www.westreptiles.com

At best they may see a shortlived bounce in price, but the long term trend is lower prices. Look at what happened with Mojaves. The ball python market is not immune to the laws of supply and demand, just as the corn and burm market were not. The problem is a lot of people cannot look at the situation objectively. You have some with an emotional bias because they love the animals (or love the idea of making money off them) or are in over their heads financially.

The dog analogy is even worse than the pet store analogy. My god people we face legislation monthly that tries to stop us from even owning these animals. The percentage of people that feel that dogs are great pets and own them versus the number of people that own reptiles is astonishing. Take away the people who only own a single frog, turtle or leopard gecko and it becomes even worse. I can tell you exactly what will happen if a pastel is in a store for $800. A whole lot of laughter. "You want how much for a snake"?

Not many people know the dog market better than I do. The store I managed recently before doing the reptile thing full time sold on average 110 dogs a month. We sold our dogs for quite a bit more than any other store in the area. Not many people are buying $2,000 dogs but they do move. We used to sell 3-5 teacup yorkies for around $2,000-$2500, 1 or 2 English Bulldogs for $2500 etc. But people snakes are not like dogs. People will not justify it like that. You cannot compare a dog to a snake. A dog is a companion, he will lift you up when you are down, provide company and hell they can even save your life. A snake sits in a cage. It is more comparable to a fish you can handle than a dog. You simply cannot compare man's best friend to a snake.
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Jeff West
www.westreptiles.com

Finally, someone with a bit of sense!
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when life hands you lemons, make super lemons, bumblebees, etc...

You can take one Mojave and breed it to 7 normal females and get 25 mojaves or more. You only need to buy that one snake. To pull the same thing off with a simple recessive you have huge start up costs and they are very hard to make in numbers. You buy a homozygous Clown, then you need a ton of female hets if you want to produce any and so on. No it is not easy to produce them because there are alot of paramaters and other people would be doing it. I think people that make bold statements about the market need to put there money where there mouth is. It is all about production. People can have big mouths but when someone posts piles of homozygous animals it has away of silencing people because it is very impressive to see 150 - 200k in hatchlings of one morph. Then to do that with several morph in one year. Especially to the people that worked really hard to make 3 and they see a pile of 25 of them or so. Then when you try to buy them from a breeder they are sold out or none available. So how the prices going down? You may get skunked on a homo to het breeding and only get hets. You have to remeber all of those het femaels are big money and you need to keep them and feed them. It takes big start up money to have very large simple recessive projects kicking out alot of homozygous animals. People can't produce like they did with codoms period. They can but it takes a huge investment to pull it off right for each morph. Rather than just buying one snake you need to buy dozens with simple recessives. That is the deal. This the last time I am going to say this. There will be no 2k pieds or anything like that when it comes to simple recessive stuff period. You guys will see. Call RDR, Nerd or any of the other big breeders. You guys think we are in denial. We see what the market is doing when it happens as it happens. We are the ones selling the snakes. Business is booming right now. I am not even advertising snakes and I am selling quite a bit. There is a double demand for simple recessive stuff right now and everyone wants them yesterday. Everyone needs to get there heads out of the sand and if you found a good deal on one buy it immediatly. They are going up in price. Look at the WIR with the clown for 10k. That was really recent. Granted it was an 05 but watch ho much the 06 hatchlings are going to be. That says it all people and I bet the guy gets it too. These snakes aren't even available right now and everything thinks the price is going to drop. All I can say is dream on. We can't possibly produce enough of them and most breeders will be holding them back anyways because homozygous females are now GOLD and they need them for thier breeding colonies.. If you think I am wrong. Find me some Clowns for sale that are cheap. Guess what? They don't exist as well as find me Genetic stripes cheap. Not happening are we getting drift here? I still don't have 1 pied female for 2k let alone 2500 and I thought they were all over the place the way someone was talking on the forum. Noone even called becasue there aren't any available for that price. Yet it is funny other big breeders and MKR have none available for sale from last year. Believe me people we don't sell so many snakes because we sell them for too much money. We give deals but these people saying that other people are in denial is ridiculous over our investments. I agree with the codoms but they are comparing apples and oranges period. Simple recessive stuff are the safer bet hands down. I am out and all you disbelievers will see and wish you took the advice. What do you thik I am going to stick my neck on the line if I don't have a great idea about it. Mark my words. I am going to produce a ton and the stuff and it is worth alot to me. It costs alot of money and alot time to pull this off and I am not giving it away period. Noone will who is in a big breeders position. Don't need to or want to. Good luck with your clutches people.

Joe at MKR

Joe at MKR
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To say that recessive morphs are going to increase in price is wishful thinking at best. In my opinion it is more like the spammers who clog up your inbox pumping up some stock as the next Microsoft.

Let's try looking at this objectively. Using the albino as an example, it is not hard to estimate this year's production of albinos will be 50 percent higher than last years. As a quick reality check, if the produced albino offspring increased 50% annually over the last 20 years, the current crop will be 1.5^20 = 3325 animals. This number seems conservative to me. The actual increase may be higher when you consider all the homozygous, het and possible het animals which will be breeding for the first time this year, plus the production of previously proven animals.

Think back to the kingsnake.com classifieds last year, of all the albino hatchlings listed, sellers continually dropping their price to gain an advantage over their competitor so they can move their offspring. Now let's look ahead to this year's listings, except that there are now 50% more hatchlings to sell (not to mention the yearlings that didn't sell last year!). Has the market for albino ball pythons gone up 50% as well? If it hasn't, prices are going to drop. And it's not like ball pythons are consumable products. If you bought one last year, chances are (unless you did something stupid) you still have it. For that matter if you bought one 10 years ago chances are you still have it. So, when the next hot, must have double or triple recessive designer morph becomes all the rage, you won't need to run out and buy another. After all, you probably have some of last year's animals still on the shelf.

You people talk like you are the only buyers of ball pythons in the world. This is a global market. We are making shipments all over the world to some people that don't even speak english all the time. They have translators and are paying big bucks. They must know something that you guys don't here on kingsnake. As well as the rest of the world outside of kingsnake. The ball python industry is the biggest up and largest coming pet trade in the world and close to koi market in Japan. That have sold fish for over 1 million a piece. The market is growing by leaps and bounds and we can't keep up with it. Yeah codms stabilized but if you think simple reccessive stuff is going to drop fast or not go up a little think again. I am a big supporter of kingsnake but it isn't the end all people.

Joe at MKR
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Japanese and most of my other clients were not even on the KS forum. KS is a nice venue and has its important place for Royal Pythons for sure but as you said the market is worldwide.

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Kyle J. Stevens
Royal Variations Ltd.

Many a false step is made from standing still.

This season, I'll be selling:

* Albinos at 5K each
* Het Albinos at 1,500/2,500 m/f each
* Pastels at 1,500/2,500 m/f each
* Het Pastels at 10K each
* Het Pieds at 2,500/3,500 m/f each

For those who act now, I'll charge an extra $500.

Don't thank me, just doing my part to "save" the market.

For those w/o a sense of humor, I'm just funnin
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Jay A. Martin
Jay Martin Reptiles

Are those het pastels 100% or ph?

>>Are those het pastels 100% or ph?

100% - Bred 'em myself
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Jay A. Martin
Jay Martin Reptiles

Jack up that 500 dollar act now price to 1500 and you got yourself a deal buddy!!! lol

***NOTE*** This post was done all in fun. No business transaction is attempting to be made.
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Mike & Wendy

2.0.0 Siberian husky, Jackrussel/schitzu
0.0.1 Ball Python
1.0.1 Leopard Gecko
1.0.0 Beardie
4.0.0 Beta's
3.1.0 Future Herper's

Act now and I'll hook you up!
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Jeremy Conrad
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...Can't...stop...must...get...more...balls...

Jeremy, with friends like you...............

female and 1.1 het for Normal if you'd like to work out a trade.

I think what people fail to realize is that the ONLY reason people buy expensive Balls is to breed them, which means the supply is growing, probably faster than demand.

>>I think what people fail to realize is that the ONLY reason people buy expensive Balls is to breed them, which means the supply is growing, probably faster than demand.
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when life hands you lemons, make super lemons, bumblebees, etc...