Hi Kerry, good question.
I think you're asking about both people's preferences and the fact that you see such different prices on some varieties. Both are indicators of popularity. Paul's right when he says it's partly personal preference. Here are a few other thoughts, limited to hondos but applicable to others as well.
Albinos: They're very dramatically altered from the normal, and different is always of interest and appeal to some people. They're also rare, or at least still uncommon compared to normals. You have to remember it's only been in the last 10 years or less that albino hondos have been available--I paid $7100 for one of my first. Those first albinos were tricolors and it was year until (very recently) the first tangerine albinos were produced. They're arguably prettier; they have richer colors, generally; and they fade less so they retain more of their beauty as adults. AND, they're rarer, because people had to cross those first tricolor albinos to tangerine normals, then selectively breed the offspring to get ever-better tangerine albinos. So it's arguably a combination of appeal & supply.
Hypos: Much the same as with albinos. They have less tipping, and they darken less overall with age. So they're generally prettier. And lthey're also a phenomenon of just the past decade, so supply is still an issue. The first hypos were tangerines so THEY had to be outcrossed just the opposite direction from the albinos--to tricolors, in sthis instance--so tricolor hypos like the ones marc shows in this thread are far less common than tangerine hypos, and some would argue they're prettier. I'm in that camp.
Everyone has different tastes, that's why carmakers produce cars in different colors. Similarly, one person might find a snow (double morph albino and anerythristic) a plain animal compared to the gaudy colors of normals, for example, while others might think a snake with pastel shades of yellow, pink and white is stunning (i'm in that camp). But with the double morphs--snows, ghosts, and eventually hybinos--they're both new "looks" that may or may not be coveted, AND they're rarer than the single morphs because of the lower "yield" you get when breeding to produce them.
I hope that makes some sense. By the way, although i mis-used the terms above, we'd all be better off saying "amelanistic" than albino, because it's more descriptive and accurate, and "hypoerythristic" instead of anerythristic for the same reason--an anerythristic would be solely black and white (or gray), yet what we call "anery" hondos almost always show varying amounts of erythrins--pale yellow, violet, even orange sometimes. It's very very subltle, but so long as any of those colors are present, the snake has REDUCED colors of that type ("hypo-"
NOT the absence of those colors ("an-".
peace
terry
