Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I'd have to say Hypo/Ghost....

here...

I agree that last year ghost were the most underated, but look at what the prices did this year. I have seen many breeders selling males for $1000 and females at $2500 when last year you could get them for half of that. I think people are starting to appreciate what you can do with a ghost. I would say an underated morph would be albino. I think $2000-$2500 is too low. We have only seen a couple of combo morphs with it, and I think once more combo morphs with albino come out, the prices for albinos will shoot up just like those of the ghost. Just my thoughts.
Jason

It's got to be Axanthics. They are just plain ugly, there is NO WAY they should be commanding the prices that people are asking. ANY morph... even any anomaly like black backs, granites or non-genetic stripes have got to be worth more.

My apologies to anyone who got suckered into buying axanthics, but WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT???? Just look at them without the pricetag .....

VOT

I finally got to see an axanthic (SK young adult male) in person a few weeks back. I was pleasantly surprised by how nice it looked. I'd actually seen pictures of the same animal first and those pictures and lots of pictures I've seen tended to show yellow that this animal really didn’t have. No, it wasn't as stunning as an albino or a pied and I would tend to agree that some axanthics might be overpriced when you look at the morph by it's self but I think most are looking at them as an ingredient for snow, true ghost, axanthic striped, caramel axanthic, clown axanthic, pastel axanthic, burgundy axanthic, etc.... Time will tell how much potential these combos have.

But that is part of my point. The usual price on axanthics should be equal to how they appeal to people by themselves. Not what you could combine them with to make cool new designers 6 years from now. I'm not going to tell anyone what they can or can't charge for their snakes, but I'm also not going to sit back and say that I think its worth the money either. I think a lot of people who like the axanthics are more impressed with the looks of the price tag rather then the looks of the snake.

VOT

Breeding potential is a huge part of pricing. Back to the classic jungle example, I couldn't sell a smoking classic jungle for $200 because people didn't think it was worth breeding because of doubt that it would be genetic. All the morphs including axanthic are probably overpriced due to their breeding potential rather than the intrinsic value of their appearance. I agree, axanthics aren't particularly striking and probably shouldn't be worth any more than albinos for example.

An example of the combo factor is Cinnamon Pastel. I've not seen one in person and maybe it would be much more striking than in pictures but so far I have to classify it with axanthic as a subtle mutation. However, the Pewter Pastel combo has skyrocketed Cinnamon Pastel demand along with the breeding potential accelerator of being some type of dominant mutation.

Regardless of appearance, if you take away all breeding and combo potential from a striking import should it prove not to be genetic then I think you will find that just the appearance part of the equation doesn’t justify much more than normal pricing. Maybe it isn’t fair but I think that is the way it is.