Reptile & Amphibian Forums

maybe i am looking at the wrong websites but it seems ball python morphs are insanely expensive ( compared to the price of regualr ball pythons) why is thier such a price difference? i mean i can understand double the price or even triple the price, but why on earth does a pie bald go for 15,000 or the axanthic 5,000 i can't see spending that kind of money on a snake ( maybe its just me) and please don't jump down my throat about not wanting to buy quality animals because i have no problems spending a little extra to get a grade-a animal but the differences in prices seems a bit unrealistic

any help would be appreciated thanks

James

The price differences have to do with a supply versus demand problem. On average about 150-200,000 normal captive hatched baby balls are brought into the country ona yearly basis. On the other hand to the best guestimate i can make maybe 75-125 piebalds will be born this year last year was about 50-75 so you do the math 500 people want 100 snakes and the breeder needs to recoup the cost of the investment he made on the Hets ot the Piebals he bought which are upwards of 7000 for a pair of hets but the hets that are breeding now were bought 18-36 months ago at a price of possibly 15,000 for the pair so if i by a pair of hets for 15,000 can i afford to sell you a snake for 250???? i don;t think so. It is a supply demand thing and with balls the prices fall much slower than the other python species because on average a ball female can have 8 babies a burm is more like 35-50 a retic 40-65 and so on and so forth so the number of morphs produced is what dictates the price of the morph. I hope this helps

Good post Chad. But I think you're way off on the amount of pieds produced this year. You're numbers seem high.

thanks for the info it does make sence. I hope that more people try to produce these morphs so the prices can be a little more reasonable because someday..oh someday i'll have a couple pairs of each!

To each their own, I would not spend 150K on a car simply because i'm not a car guy. I'd spend 15k on a ball python because I know I will still enjoy the hobby in 20 years and this 15k python will still be in my collection, not many can boast that about a car, right? Supply and demand dictates pricing on mutations...

To each their own, I would not spend 150K on a car simply because i'm not a car guy. I'd spend 15k on a ball python because I know I will still enjoy the hobby in 20 years and this 15k python will still be in my collection, not many can boast that about a car, right? Supply and demand dictates pricing on mutations...