Yeah, I know it's only economics right now but I think in some part this is driven by herping in the internet age. A lot of BP breeders tell you to look at the the prices of Cornsnakes when the first morphs came out and then tell them they're doing anything wrong with pricing them the way they are. I think what is driving this and making it so much worse is that as soon as some new morph or 'combo' comes out then word gets out much quicker than back in hey-day of Corns when it would've been more word-of-mouth or waiting on those pricelists to arrive in the snail-mail.

I also hear a lot of breeders touting their return on investment, even accounting for lower prices on some morphs by the time you're able to produce and sell your own. While that may have been true initially, I think the market has become so saturated that it's about to crash and at that point you'll see prices fall drastically on probably all those morphs. I think to sell at a big show like Tinley a breeder is taking a real gamble.

As I read the info, a single 8ft table cost something like $395 with no electricity. If you're selling hatchling Corns, other Rats, or Kings, you can probably pack a lot of merchandise into that space, but still even if you're selling an average priced animal for $40 each, you have to sell something like 10 of them just to cover the cost of the table for the weekend without taking into account your hotel room or travel costs. I think that also figures heavily into why there weren't more non-BP breeders at the show - it's probably tough to justify going and spending all that money when you're not pimping $1000 animals.

I guess we can only hope that when this whole BP thing goes bust that it'll be our time again and that we'll see lots of Asian Rats and other cool Ratsnakes for sale as the next new craze. Maybe table after table of Coxi and Rhino Rats, and Mandarins, and maybe even Ptyas.
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Matt Campbell

"I only went out for a walk and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in." John Muir

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