NEW BP MORPH!!!

I think very few can buy them as pets now but all the people who do buy them as investments will produce enough that the general public can some day buy ball python morphs as pets. I'm just the other side of KS from you and know of 5 breeders in my area with $20,000 - $200,000 in ball python morphs and there may well be others I don't know about. I'm sure some areas support more investment than others. My wife about moved out when I spent $1,000 on my most expensive ball (also sold prized animals to generate the rest of it's purchase price) so I know where you are coming from. Maybe some day it will pay off for me or maybe it won’t but I've not invested more than I can afford to lose. Some people can just afford to gamble more so yes, I do think high dollar morphs actually get sold and I think some of those buying the high dollar ones are making out just fine for helping us get to pet production levels. I think the downfall of fads like emu breeding was that there was a very limited market for the end product of pet/meat/feathers. I think there are plenty of people who would like a pet albino or piebald ball python and they should stabilize at a price comparable to a pure bred pet dog or a tropical bird.

And before someone jumps all over me I’m sure there are some smart hard working communists. It’s just that greed and laziness are common human attributes and you are going to get a lot more people working harder and smarter with the rewards of a capitalist system motivated by greed than the few who work hard and smart for ideological reasons under a communist system.

All of your comments are right on target regarding this frenzied mass production of morph pythons. It's all a matter of supply and demand...obviously there's a huge demand for morphs at the moment and not enough to go around? In the meantime,"average joes" like me have to just sit back and wait...perhaps not so patiently..for prices to become more affordable. These breeders are walking a fine line here.

I have about 7 BP's. Yes, some are hets, but I don't seem to care on that part. I bought them because they are my pets. Yes I plan to breed them, but I'd like to see what they make. I only have one morph, but there is a whole thing about this darn morph. He's a proven genetic granite, and now the prices on these animals are way out of control! I mean, I have seen a granite pair go for $26,000 and think, that's about $13,000 each! Yikes! When I had granites, I sold them as normal prices. I bought him WC, now a LTC, because I loved his markings. I have had some of his pictures up on the gallery. I agree with everyone. But it's a shame that a lot of people are buying these animals (morphs) and not care about there health, and don't seem to really handled these animals. All animals in Captivity are pets! Not money makers. They have feelings too. Some breeders will get out of there way to handle them, and take great care of there animals. I just sit back and just have a look at these new morphs. Think, only one person says something about the yellow bellies, now EVERYONE has them.

If I'm thinking of the same ad for Granites as you, then it was 0.1 Granite and 1.0 Yellowbelly. That is why it was $26k. Incase you didn't see it yet, when they are bred together they produce a striped BP with black patternless sides.

And a lot of the 'Yellowbellies' for sale aren't even yellowbellies. The one from that ad are the real ones, and where proven genetic. Most of the people putting YBs for sale don't even know if they realy are YBs or not.

RedDevil...I agree with you. I know a couple adds on KS with unknown breeders saying that they have yellowbellies(yb's), and they jacked up the price so they can have a good profit on them. I don't like scammers, and I'm sure everyone else don't like them too. I know quite a few people who seem they are, I just go to another add and leave them alone.

I thought the purpose of this hobby was to allow all sorts of people from all different walks of life understand and have respect for these amazing animals. At one time I was really into morphs, but then I actually stepped back and thought about what I was doing. Now I want to breed them and sell them cheaper than most other people so normal people will be able to buy them and care for them, not just money hungry dealers who worship the dollar as their God. I know not all dealers are like that, but I know a lot are, and I almost was too, and am ashamed to look at myself in the mirror now (syke, then how would I be able to do my hair? ;) I know now you wouldn't catch me dead with a 10,000 or even 1,000 dollar morph now that I have a family to provide for (not that my wife would let me ;) I Think it's a shame that when some people "see" an albino ball all they really see is a wad of cash, and not a truly spectatular animal. Anyway, just my $0.02, feel free to ridicule me as you wish :} This is off the subject, but where did you get that great pic of the meerkat? I live up here in Detroit (land of the pitbull), and the most we get is prarie dogs, lol!

Thanks for the comments. I took that picture of the meercat at the Kansas City Zoo. He seemed to want to pose for the picture. As soon as he saw the camera, he just ran up and posed like that. I also have a nice pic of a Gaboons Viper that I also took at the zoo. It's nothing I think people should own but I really like to look at the vipers up close.

I must agree with muah. When i first saw a morph of a BP i didn't even know it was a morph! All I saw was the $19,000 price tag on what looked to me as a normal. I went home from the show that I saw the animal and started looking up the prices, I was shocked, it took me a while to see the subtill differences in a $65 bp and a $20,000 one. Its been prly 8 months since that first show, and every time I go to the show there is that $19,000 bp at the same table that noone has bought yet(i am pretty sure its the same one) Although i dont' agree with inbreeding from what i've read inbreeding only affects certain species of reptiles.

A.J.

YOU OBVIOUSLY HAVE WAY TOO MUCH TIME ON YOUR HANDS! TRY BREEDING REPTILES!

Not quite sure what you're referring to, Yeakle or who you're talking to but I do breed reptiles as well as a local reptile rescue. Quite a number of the people who posted here also breed reptiles. So I don't quite understand what you're saying.

I think that i should start to specifically breed albinos and pieds and see if i can successfully flood the market. I could be the superman of the ball python hobbyists world.

Well Dennis...go ahead. The only problem is that in order to get viable breeding pairs you'll have to spend a fortune in the beginning which works out well for the breeders already flooding the market with overpriced stuff. The prices will only drop once people start refusing to pay those prices and let the animals sit.

Not so...you keep a steady flow of of albino/pied flowing, drive down prices, meaning sub 1K for the albino or pied and advertise your snakes well and things will be just fine. You will probably have a demand like no other seller but i guarantee it will work. You seem economically sound, but i dont understand your pessimisim. I have thought the same thing about the "morphs" and normals. The only problem i see with my train of thought is two things, one more likely than the other. Either the high end breeders will attempt to buy you out of every clutch in an attempt to preserve their high prices or whoever decides to start selling the cheap albinos and pieds could get greedy and start selling them for tons-o-cash once they see the demand for them. I dont see how you could distinguish a breeder from a normal person wanting a nice looking snake would seem to be the only drawback. Kind of like sending a kid to the baseball player for the autograph. Some baseball players dont liek to sign for the money hungru adults ready to get rich from their autograph...same way with the selling of the snakes. I hope you could connect the dot to my analogy. You may be not liked to much by the big breeders for driving down prices but who cares. You could start a new "ball project" by helping other mainstream hobbyists attain the coveted pieds albinos and maybe even the leucistics. I guess it depends on where your heart is. Yeah you would not gain anything at all from it monetarily but, people from all over would know your name from being the only person to sell a albino for 500 and a pied for 1000 and a leucistic for 2000.

There is already a system to insure that large numbers of people will be able to affords pet ball python morphs in a relatively short time. It's capitalism in a free market controlled by supply and demand. The high prices now are incentive for breeders to invest in projects and do the hard work to produce more morphs.

Bad things happen when you try to artificially manipulate the price. When breeders try to fix an artificially high selling price most animals don't sell and the few buyers who don't negotiate to the actual supply and demand price get burned when the artificially high price breaks resulting in an abnormally large and sudden drop in price.

Artificially low prices are also bad. They reduce the incentive for production and hence the supply (i.e. bread lines back in communist USSR). Who wants to do the work and take the risk of investing in a project if there isn’t much hope for profit? The higher the profit, the harder and smarter people work and hence the more they produce. It has been shown time and time again that high prices increase production and low prices reduce it.

If you won the lottery and had the means to start large enough albino and pied projects (like 100’s of breeders) to greatly effect the price then what? You would need to work your butt off to actually produce all those snakes. I think the demand is huge at pet prices. Any idea how hard it would be to produce thousands and thousands of ball pythons? If you had the huge initial investment and the determination to follow through for years and years to even get started producing at those levels the lower prices would discourage other breeders and probably reduce the overall supply. You would probably have a long waiting list for your artificially low priced animals and with fewer produced by others due to not being able to sell too much higher than your price there would probably be a net loss in the number of morphs available to the public. Maybe you would have a lottery to decide who gets your available supply? Someone would probably figure out a way to cheat, maybe entering more than once. Historically artificial prices lead to shortages and/or corruption. The free market works best! Take an economics class!!!

The idea of forcefully dropping prices is attainable. Whether someone wants to try it is up to them. I am just saying with the simple concept of supply and demand you could drop the prices of the "morphs" significantly by flooding the market. Im not talking about running a business here either. I am talking about making these ridiculously priced snakes available to common people. They are animals for the love of it. We shouldnt need to fight over who can and cant have a certain type of animal as a pet.

The truth of the matter is simply that "flooding" the market is exceptionally difficult. Like Randy said, it would take a HUGE investment of both time and money for a single breeder to affect the prices that way. Ball Pythons don't lay many eggs so it would really need to be a cooperative of several, if not hundreds, of breeders. That's almost what's happening now. Every other breeder in the country is breeding BP morphs and of course listing themselves as the best. The price decrease has to come from the consumer. These are not things required to sustain life like the russian bread analogy so the consumer can simply say I'm not paying those prices and let the greedy breeders sit on the stock and eventually they will have to lower the prices or continue to foot the bill on feeding, cleaning and vet care that comes with owning animals. This is a consumer driven market and the consumers need to realize this and set their own demands. The only problem with that is, all consumers have to be on the same page as far as where the price should fall to. Currently they aren't. There are people like me that think prices are obnoxious and not anywhere near reality and some who have no problem paying $5000-$20000 for an animal. The market will slow way down in the next 5 years as more are offered and everyone is competing for the same business and lower their prices. Like Randy said, it's a free market and like all free markets, consumers have to set what the price should be by not buying at high prices and forcing the market down.