Reptile & Amphibian Forums

It's just crazy! Doesn't anyone value their ball pythons anymore? I scan the classifieds maybe twice a day to review prices, and it's just getting ridiculous.

I just seen a ad for a male spider for about $350 or something like that? Will we get to the point that the spider will be equivalent to a pastel? I've seen some male pastels for as low as $75.......CHEAPER THAN SOME NORMALS!!!!

To me it seems that people are just trying to mass produce, but why? And when they have the 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, ....etc clutches hatch they are trying anything to get rid of them. I just don't understand.

I don't know Champagnes are between $10-12K what will they be next year $5K.

What's everyone's thoughts on this???

Pitoon

Get used to it.There are those chosen few without business sense.They usually dont last long.Terry

Terry,
It just boggles my mind............why produce more than you can sell or handle?

It will be really pitiful when i see a pastel for $50 and a spider for $100................i know the day will come............probably sooner than i think.

Pitoon

"It will be really pitiful when i see a pastel for $50 and a spider for $100"

Why? In the end ball pythons are just like anything else and they are only worth the amount that the two people involved in the transaction agree to.

Don't get me wrong, I love ball pythons (I am particularly partial to albinos myself) and some of these morphs are truly stunning visually. In the end though, no matter the paint job, they are still just ball pythons.

It seems to me that those that approach ball python (or any snake, for that matter) breeding as a business with a solid plan, good marketing and patience are the ones that do well. The ones that approach it as an investment in the way that one approaches stocks (buy it and it will increase in value) are the ones that are disappointed.

These are just my thoughts. Take them for what they are worth for I am neither business person nor investor. I am just a guy with a couple of snakes.

Rob

that's a great way to look at it.

so let me pick up that Super Phantom for $50, LOL!!!!

no matter what i think the pastel morph is done.....period.

i have a pastel that has a market value of $200, want to buy it for $500.

Pitoon

If you can get someone to sell you a Super Phantom for $50.00 I would certainly sell the pastel for $500.00 and get 10!!!!

That is exactly my point though, as long as the buyer and seller agree on the price than the snake is not over or under valued for that transaction. Both buyer and seller are happy. And while those couple of extremely high or extremely low priced transactions will impact the market somewhat, at the end of the day it is the majority of transactions that will rule the market and set the price.

Rob

>>that's a great way to look at it.
>>
>>so let me pick up that Super Phantom for $50, LOL!!!!
>>
>>no matter what i think the pastel morph is done.....period.
>>
>>i have a pastel that has a market value of $200, want to buy it for $500.
>>
>>Pitoon

you must remember as these animals come down in price, you are selling to the general public that want pretty snakes and have no intention of breeding. I don't see the pastel dropping too much more (heck there isn't too much more to drop) and these $75 pastels that are out there are UGLY!!!!!!! I didn't sell one pastel last year for market price, they all sold for higher because I spent the time to breed into good females and the money up front to buy the best male pastel and best females possible. Since we are looking at selling to non-breeding public we must concentrate on producing the best looking animals that will fetch a slightly higher price. A perfect example of this is with corn snakes. You can buy a typical okettee corn for $35 or you can buy a screaming abbott or love line okettee that can bring over $200. Now a breeder won't be able to mass produce those screaming animals and that is why they cost more. The same with ball pythons. I intentionally only produce 3-4 clutches of pastels so that I can make a few hold back females for myself and a few top quality animals for sale. I do this with all the morphs I work with since if they don't sale I do have to look at them and dangit I want them to be pretty. I find it funny when people complain about not being able to sale their animals for market price and then I see them and I have to laugh, I wouldn't buy them for half market price they are soo ugly.
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Josh & Krysty Hutto
J&K Reptiles

Various Ball Pythons, boas, dogs, cats, fish, an amel tiger retic female, a couple sulcatas and a few other odds and ends.

a BAD dog is MADE not bred, support the American Pit Bull Terrier as the greatest breed of dogs on Earth!!!!!

Of course this world is going to be over-run by Balls!
They love, 20? 30? 40? years?
how many are hatched each season?
say one breeder
100 snakes on hand
50% females produing, a modest 4 eggs
so this breeder will be selling 200 babies a year

half are normals? sure
25% mid level(pastel/spider)
25% high end

if you can get rid of that many babies a year,
50 for normals(cheap here)
250 for mid level(in topic)
modest 1000 for high end

thats a crap load of money, selling the balls cheap, a return on investment is easy to recover first season.

A good business(say walmart) produce high volume, sell low prices, and wipe their competition out, those who insist on the high prices, are the competition.

A valuable lesson I have learned, something is only worth as much as some one is willing to pay.

I enjoy falling prices, and growing populations, it will produce some much more interesting morphs.

Cheers

The price of spiders isn't all that high and there are a lot of them on the market -- it's also possible that said spider is a wobbler thus priced cheaply. Who knows.

Some people just want to move the snakes and pay their bills. You can't really fault them they are trying to make ends meet in this economy. Lots of competition with show prices to avoid those shipping fees as well.

Those trying to purposefully to sink markets should be avoided -- you know the ones that advertise they have a ton of $700 morphs for sale at $250 -- they are no better than the scammers -- don't support them.

But prices will continue to go down until the supply goes down and the demand goes back up -- but that isn't going to happen overnight -- too many people trying to get rich in balls.
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Tosha
JET Pythons

me personally.........i think when the market and hobby is saturated of a particular morph. that's it it's done. that morph will never recover and gain in value period.

unless 2/3's of that particular morph just vanishes off the face of the earth then it's a lost cause.

it's a real shame because spiders and pastels are a true necessity to make the higher end combos.

can anyone imagine when killer bees will be $500!!!!!! all that time into a project and no value.

Pitoon

Don't count them out just yet -- although there is a saturation of pastels on the market -- go look for a nice clean female and see how many you find. A few years ago people were selectively breeding these morphs and you saw lots of stunning pastels -- then you went to people mass producing a bunch of ugly ones -- followed by producing a bunch of not so spectacular cast offs from combo projects. Where as mediocre to ugly pastels are all over the place - the demand for nice clean pastels is still there as is the price tag.
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Tosha
JET Pythons

i completely understand you, but you got to think as if you are in the consumers' shoes. most people are just trying to make ends meat, while some are comfortable and can spend some of their hard earned cash of nice morphs.

say someone who only has $100 to spend, they see a ugly pastel and buy it. to them it may be the best looking snake they ever saw and they are happy to own it. but then this person decides to breed this butt ugly pastel to only produce............yes......... more butt ugly pastels. and then sells them for $75, and it just trickles from there. someone tries to cut another and sells them for $60 and so on.

who's going to spend $500-$800 for a pretty pastel when they can buy a super for $1K.

it's like a dog that craps on top of a hill........a wind blows the craps and it just rolls down hill from there.

those that value their snakes i see always sell them for more, or maybe they have an overhead they need to cover, who knows.

Pitoon

I would without a doubt spend $500 for a pretty pastel over $100 for an ugly one -- in the end it will be more of a benefit to me and anyone that buys my offspring - which incidentally I will be able to price at a slightly elevated cost equivalently to the the higher quality as compared to the ugly ones.

There will always be a market for the selectively bred balls -- no matter how down hill the general morph value goes.
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Tosha
JET Pythons

WOW, I didn't know $500 for a snake is horrible. Let's say it takes 3 years for killer bees to reach that price (which is realistic). Bumblebee male $1000, pastel female (a stunner)=$300 so $1300 in that pairing. Say they breed at 2.5 years and the female gives you 6 eggs and you hit odds good (of course you could get killed and get no killerbees) and get 2 killer bees, a spider, a pastel female, and 2 normals. You sale the 2 killer bees for $500 each, the spider for $200, the pastel for $150, and the 2 normals for $35 each. That first clutch just made $1420 which pays for the original pair and you still have them. Now let's think that you bred the male bee to other females or bought 3 pastel females to go with the bee and now just doubled or trippled your production by adding only $600 to the purchase price. So for just under $2000 you can possibly make $3000-$4000 (most likely more if you bred the bee male to other females once he was 1.5 years old) in just 3 years. Those figures are if the killerbee morph drops that drastically so the potential for profit is much higher. Besides most of us are hobbyist breeders anyway. I have a real job. I don't have to pay my electric bill with snakes. Those that do just produce more. I know of several breeders that routinely produce 200 clutches of bp's a year and they do fine. Wholesale some out, retail some, make a good living doing what you love. Those that think the sky is falling should probably get out of breeding as they can't understand the simple laws of supply/demand/economics. And as toscha stated, produce prettier animals, get more money for them.
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Josh & Krysty Hutto
J&K Reptiles

Various Ball Pythons, boas, dogs, cats, fish, an amel tiger retic female, a couple sulcatas and a few other odds and ends.

a BAD dog is MADE not bred, support the American Pit Bull Terrier as the greatest breed of dogs on Earth!!!!!

the killerbee will get there........it's just a matter of time.

and yes you can easily make your money back in a breeding of a few clutches. but you're thinking inside the box. there's to many variables in life to think all is good and dandy.

i too breed as a hobby, and don't expect to make a killing on anything. i have a full time job, a family with a toddler and infant my time is limited. but why produce so much that you hurt the market????

that's the answer that just boggles me.

it's just as someone put it.........your customer today is your competition tomorrow. those quick fly by night breeders really hurt the market.

Pitoon

you aren't getting it. It's not the big breeders that are hurting the market, it's us. It's those that don't have to sell a snake to pay the bills. Trust me the big breeders would love to be able to sale a snake for $1000 vs $150. It's the hobby breeders that say "well I don't have the time to do my full time job and take care of all these animals so I'm gonna sale them fast. Besides any money I make is extra spending cash." That is why the big breeders have to produce soooo many so that they can compete with prices and still make a living. Think of it this way, for every $100k a breeder makes it's only putting about $60k in their pocket after paying for housing, feed, payroll, advertising, phone bills, ect...... And that is being generous. If they breed their own rats, that's 2 full time employees at least. If they don't breed rats, that's another $1000-$3000 a week depending on the size of their collection and the time of the year. Sure the big breeders could get together and agree to not produce X amount of pastels so the price will stabalize, but then you have the hobbyist breeders that don't care about that crap and just want to unload them. Like I've said before, breed for quality and it is still easy to make money. It's not that people don't value their animals, it's those that don't effect us all.
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Josh & Krysty Hutto
J&K Reptiles

Various Ball Pythons, boas, dogs, cats, fish, an amel tiger retic female, a couple sulcatas and a few other odds and ends.

a BAD dog is MADE not bred, support the American Pit Bull Terrier as the greatest breed of dogs on Earth!!!!!

i was never talking about the "big breeders" i was talking about us hobby'ers. but i agree with your above post 100%

Pitoon

Passion trumps everything...wait...think about it a minute.
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Dale....dgoins222@yahoo.com
www.LibertyReptiles.com

When every customer you sell to is instantly your competition next year, your product will bottom out quickly.

Exactly. Off the top of my head I can't think of another business where 90% of your customers become competition. Dogs for instance, their prices remain the same because most people don't want to breed dogs and you would have to have lots of space, a good vet, daily feedings, etc. You can fit 50 ball pythons in a closet and spend 5 hours a week maintaining them. That right there can hatch out 200 balls a year easy. Feed them a couple times then sell them. You don't have to immunize them, wean them, deal with pregnancy/birthing issues.
I wish it wasn't like this, but it is what it is. I miss the old days when every morph was over $1k, it sure was nice. But the people that could only dream of owning some of those morphs sure don't.

Eric
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www.ESReptiles.com

Call me scum, but I think the people who run up the prices on the "morphs" are doing just what they are doing with the gas prices. If you can get it - charge it!

I'm very new into Balls, but it appears as if people are mutating the species into Freak-show proportions just to make a buck. Some are so eager to invent a "hot new morph" that they will call it anything.

If I had the new morphs, I would sell them for $50, just so someone who really wanted it could get it.

Suuuuuure you would. Easy to say when you don't actually have them. Hmm let me make 10K selling a few morphs for one price or I can make 200 selling them really cheap. I'm sure you wouldn't care about 9.8K though.

but you have to remember, your not going to have the hot new morphs, with out having spend quite a bit of money on the parents. Your dreaming if you think any of those 10k snakes have come out of nowhere. I would have thought that anyone selling a 10k snake these days, has probably spend 5-10 times that on the collections at a minimum over time. I dont own any ball pythons, but i do watch the market of them quite closely. Just look at most of the people that produce these incredibly expensive snakes (or at least made it possible to), people like Ralph Davis, VPI, BHB, NERD etc etc. Do you understand how big some of these guys collections are? i suggest you have a look at some of there collections on youtube, they have hundreds to thousands of snakes, have been working with these recessive genes for years, have had to gamble on many new morphs (many of which im sure didnt pay off), and have probably spend more money on there collections than you could ever imagine. They deserve every cent they get.

you got to play devils advocate here.....some people do this as a hobby, while some do it to feed their kids and pay their bills.

it takes time and knowledge to make those freaks shows. all the way from the catcher in africa, to the shipper, to the wholesale buyer, to the seller, to you. everyone wants a piece of the pie (money)

PItoon

OK, ya'll are right. It is just hard for me to see these beautiful animals exploited and treated as some kind of marketing gimmick. THe hobby used to be fun when it was a hobby. Now look where it is going. As someone said, people now have hundreds of balls in racks in warehouses. They are the 21st century version of stamp collecting.

Do you know what Spiders bought wholesale are going for?

HA!!!!!!! Please enlighten me. I would really like to know what they go for.

Pitoon

$125-$175 - Who knows what goodies Daytona will hold though.......
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South Central Herpetological

The laws of supply and demand are naturally going to push the prices of co-doms, like spiders and pastels, down. Back when the first spider crossed the atlantic, his babies sold for seven-ten thousand because there was only a handful in existance (I know someone personaly who has spent that much). Who didn't expect the prices to go down? The co-dom morphs are easy to make, they spread quicker, and its a one-generation thing. Supply goes up, demand goes down. Pastels are going to be the same. Recessive morphs, as well as 2-3-4 generation animals, are not going to be like that, they WILL hold their value longer. If your really that P-O-ed about it, I don't know what to tell you -- it's how business works.

And like recessive and multiple generations, theres always females to think about when holdiong up the market. Yes, you might find someone that will sell you a $75 dollar hatchling male pastel that will breed by this season, but to get the adult female pastel to be ready to breed with him this season, you should be spending close to or over four digits. This goes for all/most morphs.

I try to think of it this way, as prices drop to reasonable levels (and don't any of you try pinning on me that I said $75 dollars is reasonable), meaning okay prices - not too low, yet reachable - more people are able to enter the hobby. Your average middle-class American doesn't have thousands (and some even hundreds) to blow on a snake. The reptile world is getting A LOT of publicity. Yes prices may have dropped, but this has allowed for more people to enter the hobby because they had this amount of money to spend on this morphs. As a result, the prices drop but now you have more people to sell your animals to. Yes, your customers may become your comptetition, but in the long run they will still be your customers. There is always expansion of your collection.

And I don't understand some of the crazy complaints. I mean, I have a small yet quality collection that I've dumped thousands into (I'm sure I'm not the only one), and I'm no where near having a bigger incubator. Plus, the first thing I can think of when people scream "the sky is falling" is that Rack prices aren't dropping or changing. And heck, it may be just me, but I'm pretty sure bedding and rodent prices are even going up in some places. And that doesn't include the actual cost of some of my higher-end reptiles (and I don't really have any of those!!).

And I agree with ROb, "The ones that approach it as an investment in the way that one approaches stocks (buy it and it will increase in value) are the ones that are disappointed."
I think that was very well said.

And when your so set on the negative, you'll only see people in the market driving the prices down, but believe it or not, others driving the prices up do exist. Some "sky is falling" individuals ARE out to rob you.

Its business, capitalism isn't fair. But think about it thoroughly - think about supply and demand - instead of automatically thinking everything is at a loss.

Just my two cents, please don't rip me apart. No one is ever nice in here.
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Cheers!
• Chelsea Lynn Gardiner
(and Frank M. Wood)

your logic makes sense, and i'm not sad at the fact that my 500 euro male pastel didn't gain much in value.

also spiders were going for more than $7-10K they were more than $20K when they first hit the borders.

what i'm saying is why people try to cut others by selling them cheaper? it's like the chinese they MASS produce, yet where's the quality. all of their MASS production items break after a few uses.

people make 5 clutches of pastels to sell them cheaper than the next guy. thus bringing the market down, rather than putting their foot down and keeping the set price just about equal to everyone else that's selling them.

Pitoon

I don't think most people (well, I guess you couldn't put it past everyone) are intentionally trying to cut others down. But I try to find the best in people.

I like to think quality will always rule over quantity in this hobby, and that alone will run the market in the long run.
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Cheers!
• Chelsea Lynn Gardiner
(and Frank M. Wood)

"people make 5 clutches of pastels to sell them cheaper than the next guy. thus bringing the market down, rather than putting their foot down and keeping the set price just about equal to everyone else that's selling them. "

This is stated time and time again on these forums. Pythons are not easy to sell. If you set your price, for say $500, the same as the next guy, does not mean that everyone sells their pythons for $500. Most of the time, it means that you, the last guy in, will have a very difficult time selling your pythons for $500. If everyone 'put their foot down', the only ones who would sell pythons at that level $500 would be the very well known breeders. ....do believe that well known breeders will sell out and do very well while the average joe new guy will not have sold any pythons. Think worst case scenario - it happens. It is hard to sell pythons. Goes back to differentiating yourself from the pack - which is hard to do too.

exactly...............if it's hard to sell PYTHONS, then why make 5 clutches, that you can't sell???? that's what i'm saying, people mass produce and then screw it up for everyone else.

if you make 5 clutches and then keep 3 for yourself and sell the other 2 then that's something. but trying to sell 20 snakes is not easy, but you can make it easy by selling it lower than the next guy. it's just wrong

Pitoon

How do you tell the guy who's breeding snakes to pay the bills "You can't breed half your females this year, 'cause the price of XX morph looks shakey."?

Who tells the gal whose pretty pastel just topped 1,500 grams "Sorry, but you can't breed that animal this year, because Joe B. won't be able to get the $$ he wants for pastels if there are too many around."?

Lets face it - there are as many business philosophies as there are breeders, and the number of breeders _is_ going to grow. At some point, most of them are going to be selling snakes to folks who just want pretty snakes. Those who work a little harder before the lockup to produce quality over quantity will hopefully be able to command a better coin for their babies. (Those who produce more babies of lower quality are going to work harder too - after the lockup, when they've got to build a bigger incubator, clean more cages and shell out more for rodents than the other guy. Wonder who's got the higher overhead, and who's got the better profit margin, long term?)

Then again, I'm no expert - just a guy with a few young snakes upstairs.

~Bruce

"The ones that approach it as an investment in the way that one approaches stocks (buy it and it will increase in value) are the ones that are disappointed."

Agreed. Pythons aren't like any other true investment. They're more like cars(immediately losing value), beanie babies(quick buck money chasers), or commodities(everyone produces the same thing and overloads the market). Virtually everyone is trying to chase the same thing. Everyone produces the same morphs and trying to sell them. Every sale creates a future competitor. Except a very few who are the initiators of a morph, or one of the handful to get in at the pinnacle of the pyramid, it is difficult to actually make money. For everyone on this forum who speaks up to say 'no, I made my money back on my 'investment', there are 20 who are silent who have not.

I would bet the most successful(financially that is) sellers are those who under price and try and offload their clutches as fast as possible - those who understand that they'll always be a clutch next year, and those next clutches will produce pythons that are worth far less that this years clutch. It's how all businesses are run, if you're trying to get into a market you either differentiate yourself from everyone else by offering something unique(which 99% of ball breeders cannot do), or you differentiate yourself by price - which creates this race to the bottom. Depending on when you purchased your 'investment', bought high or lower, it works our or it doesn't - I'd imagine mostly, it doesn't.

350 sounds good......they went down to 250 last year.....

yes....massively mass produced is the ball python in America's world.......yet they still import wild stuff why??? (400,000? yet....used to 800,000)

.....I can think of a couple people that sell over 30,000 snakes a year (for yeeeears now)......and that's just 2 guys.....(not all balls and not all produced by them I don't think...but still...

.......$$$$$$$$$$$

.......been that way...........

......
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......

Some of the other posts on this topic made some very good points. There are several things at work here. Consider the following:

1. For some this is a business. For some this is a hobby that has the potential to pay for itself.
2. The business people view things differently than the hobbyists.
3. The business people are not necessarily good at business. The hobbyists don't care that this is a business.
4. If you're not a big breeder you have absolutely no concept of how much it costs to run a reptile business. The expense is enormous. Whether you agree with reptiles as a business or not does not change the fact that it is. Nor does it change the fact that the overhead is huge. For this reason breeders will not intentionally drive prices down.
5. Mass production is only a small part of the challenges facing the ball python market. Large breeders are not producing pastels on purpose any longer. They are the occasional outcome of efforts to produce other morphs. This means that large breeders are not adding significant numbers of pastels into the marketplace. The hobbyist is. Hobbyists are breeding pastels to normals. Hobbyists are breeding pastels to pastels. At this stage in the game no breeder with a collection of size is doing that. This statement can be repeated for most of the long-term single-gene morphs.
6. Breeders and hobbyists alike have no valid way to determine the true market value of an animal. Yes, I know that something is only worth as much as someone is willing to pay for it. That's not what I'm talking about, though. A little over 12 months ago people were willing to pay upwards of $2,000 for a pinstripe. Now they are only willing to pay $450-500. Please ask yourself where they are getting their "willingness".
7. Because we have no way to determine an animals value we turn to the Internet; kingsnake.com and others like it. You see that a particular morph is selling for $300. You have also produced this morph. You want to sell yours before others so you price it for $250. The next person prices it for $225. Before long, the value of the morph is gone. But please understand this point: It it not entirely because of supply and demand. It is because of the classified web sites and the motivations of the sellers posting animals. Supply and demand does not take Pinstripes from $2,000K to $450 in a tick over 12 months. False market forces do. During that period of time it is unlikely that there was sufficient production from animals that average 6 eggs/clutch (only 3 of which should be pinstripes). Combine this with the fact that most big breeders are not trying to produce pinstripes in large quantities. They are trying to produce multiple gene carriers. In a very real sense the production of a pinstripe can be viewed as a failed opportunity (an egg that didn't hit the odds).
8. Prices will always be falling. This is true. Prices should not be falling as fast as they are. This is also true. The next time you hatch out a baby morph where are you going to go to find out how much it is worth? Why is the person selling a morph like yours posting the price they are? What's their rationale? Are you going to price your animal higher or lower than what others are doing?

You can check out an article I put on my web site regarding this topic: http://www.eastcoastreptilebreeders.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=41:the-kingsnakecom-effect&catid=5:faq&Itemid=26