Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Granted I'm new to this but I can't understand why Pythons are so much more than Boas. Hell I can't believe snakes go for $1000 much less $35000, I thought the first site I looked at like that was fake because of those prices. How can you charge over $1000 for some of those snakes!?!? And why is it mainly Pythons that are so expensive because I saw most of the boas were under $1000.

If you looked in the classifieds years back you would see corn snake morphs with slightly high prices but now they are for the most part done and you see all the morphs in pet store and shows for 10-50 dollards. If you wanted the first albino burmese python you would have paid a HUGE chunk of change for it and now you will be lucky to get $150 selling one. Ball python morphs are the new thing and somehow the market prices got insanly high so it will be like this for a while due to less people being able to afford to get into it and small egg clutches. In my opinion its a pretty good thing and the only problem is the worthlessness of normal ball pythons. If we could stop importing them maybe those prices would go up a little and it will be a positive effect for the species. Right now you are seeing animals that are priced for breeding and people buying them plan to make new ball pythons from it and add to their wallet. Why pythons? just because. If bet if we see some new genes in another animal with small clutches and stays under 6 ft with a good temperment we can expect high prices in them as well. Some parts of it are positive and others make little sense if you look at them right. an easy top take care of animal that has a look that can make your head spin now costs $30,000 while a normal green anaconda (which makes my head spin)will cost $100-300. This for some reason draws people with little intent or means to take care of the animal into adulthood to buy something that is going to likely cause a big media stink in the future when it gets loose or is even let go or maybe kills a child. It is not big with anacondas now because animal planet and the nippy babies keep most people away but I always manage to turn on COPS and see a huge retic (low IQ people drawn to pretty colors and large fallic representation...wow am I going to get some people that take that the wrong way...anyway. no knock on retic people just the folks who can't say reticulatus) that escaped in someone's yard or garage. Anyway, enough with all the junk that has nothing to do with anything...they are expensive because market value and investment oportunity. Remember about 15 years ago when silver was more per ounce than gold?...We didn't know why but those smart made a quick buck and those who held on lost out. Ball pythons seem to be more solid for a little while. Oh, and notto mention these high end animals are all captive bred and nobody can go picking them out of the wild in mass amounts. So maybe it is good the normals are not worth a lot to maybe lessen the amounts taken out of the wild. Who knows? Did this post make any sense because I really needed to stop typing about 700 words ago. lol

Get out your economics primer and read the first few chapters.

Charge what the market will pay.
Supply and demand - if the supply is low and the demand is high, then the price goes up.
Development cost - companies and people are spending mucho bucks to develope new morphs. It ain't cheap. Go price a new drug versus one that's been on the market for 30 years. $4 a pill versus $.05 each
People want to make a profit, sometimes an obscene profit, but if the people will pay it, then who's to blame.
When the supply goes up, then the price comes down.
When everybody has one, then nobody wants to pay much.
Blah, blah, blah!!!