That's generally how I see things. I remember when the Hypo BRB's were first put up for sale by EBV (I was working for them at the time doing all their website work). The repsonse was huge. We got a lot of emails about them. However, the price was high on them at $7,000 each. So, none were sold. The next year, same thing. This leads me to believe that at $7,000, the high price far outweighed the demand and that was not a tangible market value.
Now at the current value of $4,000 to $5,000 for the EBV line Hypo BRBs, I see a much greater interest and many more potential buyers. 100% Hets. at $2,500 to $3,000 a pair is also much more tangible. We haven't even advertised these guys for sale on the classified listings and I've already had a few interested people contact me about them.
I think that the Hypo BRBs will easily hold up the pricing scenario Jeff presented. I don't think they will have a problem staying at or above $1,000 for Hypos and $250 for Hets. in the next five years. In fact, I see them possibly holding a little higher value than that. From what I've seen from the Ball Python morphs and Boa morphs, high priced morphs will drop in price as the market changes. With each season, the prices drop a little more until it hits a plateau. Things tend to stick at the plateau for a few seasons before dropping again. Sometimes, the plateau can last several years.
Take Albino Boas for example. Four or five years ago, they were $1,000 and we didn't get any. We said, well, we'll just get them next year when they're $500. Well next year came and they were still $1,000 each and the next year after that and the next year after that. And now here we are five years later and they are still around $800 to $1,000+ each.
Now as the prices of these morphs drop, I believe demand will increase. These are very attractive, beautiful animals. A lot of people love Brazilian Rainbow Boas and many work with them. I'm sure several BRB enthusiasts would like to add a Hypo to their collection. However, not very many can justify spending $4,000 on a snake. But how about $1,000? That's quite do-able for many people. There are very few people buying $4,000+ snakes as pets. However, there are a lot more people that can justify spending $1,000 for a nice pet snake. People spend that much if not more on dogs and cats all the time.
Therefore, when the market reaches a lower plateau, you want to be in the position where you have enough animals to supply the demand.
Another example: Spider Ball Pythons. We purchased a male Spider Ball Python in 2003 for $15,000. He bred for us in 2004 and sired 8 babies, 4 males and 4 females. We sold one male at the beginning of 2004 for $10,000. We sold another male later on in the year for $8,000. We kept all the remaining babies to add to our breeding group. From only selling two males, we had already made more than our initial investment back. Not to mention we just increased our breeding group six times over.
This season, we not only had our original male breeder to work with but also the two males that we held back. We produced 17.15 Spiders. The Spider market took a big hit and prices dropped dramatically. They went down to anywhere between $2,500 to $3,500 for females and $3,500 to $5,500 for males. However, out of the 32 Spiders that we produced, we only have about 10 babies left for sale. We only kept 2 and SOLD 20 Spiders! And these were easy sales too. People would just call up and buy them. If we just use a general figure of $3,000 (which is far less than we sold most of our Spiders for) for 20 Spiders, that's about $60,000 pure profit in Spider Ball Pythons this season. Plus the $18,000 from last season, we've made over $75,000 on the Spider project to date! Not to mention all the future sales. Not bad for an initial $15,000 investment!!
That's where we'd like to be when the Hypo Brazilian Rainbow Boa market starts to come down. I'm not saying we want the market to fall, but when the prices do come down (which eventually they will but hopefully not as quickly as the Spiders did), we want to be in a good position to be able to supply the higher demand.
Anyways, just wanted to share those thoughts...
Thanks,
Celia
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Celia Chien
www.BoaConstrictorMorphs.com
Celia Chien Photography
www.ExoticsByNature.com
www.BallPythonMorphs.com
www.CornsnakeMorphs.com
) but that the hypo's would still command a significantly higher price. I guess my real question is with a significant reduction in price how much pent up demand might be out there with people who could not (or choose not to) afford the current higher prices?
