Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Has anyone looked in the classifieds lately? There are normal wildcaught females going for 300 and up, and normal babies going for 400 a pair because they are "reduced pattern" or "possible axanthic" or even some snakes which are definitely not yellow bellies going for 2500 or more because they kinda look like a yellow belly. Just because you put a picture of its belly in the add doesn't mean it is a yellow belly. The characteristics which show these heterozygous phenotypes are obvious, don't be tricked into emptying your wallet for a snake someone is trying to pass off as rare. Don't get me wrong. If you produce something out of this world which many of you are doing, then set the price where supply meets demand and let the free market economy work for you. Lets get real though. We have people trying to get rich off of babies they bought two weeks ago in a shipment from Africa for 10 bucks a piece or less. How many poor newbies are being suckered into this and buying animals they think will make them rich which are nothing more than normal babies from a shady salesman.

The herp hobby has always been a little shady, that is why you only deal with reputable people you can trust. I know that for every person like myself who loves their animals and loves the idea of experimenting to see what the new genetic combinations they can produce, there are 10 more out there who see nothing but dollar signs when they think, if I buy this cinnamon pastel male for $25,000 and breed him to 100 females then I can be a millionare in no time. I sincerely hope I am overestimating the problem, but right now it seems like this to me. Don't get me wrong, I would love to have a pair of every morph out there, who wouldn't? But I am not planning on quitting my job and becoming a professional snake breeder. I will have a white, black, pewter pastel, piebald, albino, and everything else my wife lets me put in the house eventually, but I will wait when I can afford it.

Eventually the prices will come down and we will see a leucistic ball in our local pet store and say to our kids, "I remember when one of those sold for $250,000 and it was the only one it the world." By then your kid may want the brown and black one because the white one looks too plain. LOL

I am interested to hear from you all on the present situation in your opinion. I fear that increase worth of the WC females will lead to overexploitation in the wild and more negative press about the herp hobby.

Just my two cents, well maybe 2 bucks.

Shannon
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1.21 ball pythons
1 speckled kingsnake
1 snapping turtle
1.0 argentine horned frog
1.1 English Bulldogs

I fear that increase worth of the WC females will lead to overexploitation in the wild and more negative press about the herp hobby.

Better these animals go for a few dollars than being traded like baseball cards don't you think? The lower the price, the more DISPOSABLE the animal is. Look at anoles, Leo Geckos, corns, etc etc. I don't like people trying to rip others off with fake "morphs", but there's nothing wrong with LIVING ANIMALS being more than a 5-year old's weekly allowance.

When they did cost "as much as a 5 year olds weekly allowance" there wasn't as much of a demand because it was always said that WC's don't eat and usually have to be force fed, or will wither away and die over time because of lack of feeding and heavy parasite loads. Now they are really worth some money the importers are going to catch on and instead of releasing so many females after laying our CH clutches, the will start sending more over because we will be willing to pay more for them. The asian markets do take a lot of them too for food and handbags, but now they are worth more to us do you really think those animals which were destined for Asia are not going to still go there. We are just going to get more adult females that would have been released if we hadn't been eager to pay more for them.

My point is this, we need to be responsible herpers and understand what we do has an impact on the wild populations of the species we love. If you are going to get animals from a wild source, either directly or indirectly, make it hatchlings. They have such a high mortality rate in the wild that the impact of us taking 200,000 a year is less than taking 10,000 adult females a year. The adults have proven they are the strong and can live through all the harshness that the environment provides. They need to be left where they are and allowed to produce many more generations. I don't want to hear 20 years down the road that the ball pyhon is on the verge of extinction in the wild because of overharvesting.
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1.21 ball pythons
1 speckled kingsnake
1 snapping turtle
1.0 argentine horned frog
1.1 English Bulldogs

Did you think a civil war in Togo and international sanctions therefrom wouldn't affect the BP trade? It is the forces of aggregate supply that are driving the prices up, wherein demand doesn't seem to have changed all that much!

The prices aren't "up"...the plethora of fly by night, wanna get rich quick, 100 lot buying, trying to quadruple their money before the even feed anything, classified account holder is up. That's all. Nice CH BP's are still, oh...around $10.00
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