BP market is sickening me

I am getting so sick of the BP market. Speculation causes prices to skyrocket overnight, crooks are appearing daily to try and pass off fake hets and fake morphs, small time people can't get decent prices due to crooks because they don't have established names, the list goes on and on.
The scams and ripoffs are there when buying other species but I gotta tell you, all of the other species combined don't bring out the lowlifes like the BP's.
Is anyone else getting disgusted with the way the market has been going and the amount of crooks lately?
Another thing that makes me sick is when people try to justify the actions of scammers by using loopholes.
At the rate the BP market is going, trust in people is going to disappear completely.
Just a few years ago, I would buy an animal based on a pic and actually get the animal I was expecting. Now it's a hit or miss unless you have done business with the person before. Even large breeders are screwing over people (there is a thread on KS about a well known breeder who sold a non feeding, dehydrated BP to someone for $35K and refuses to return calls or emails).
I am beginning to think that dealing with BP's is just not worth it anymore and I should just turn my existing BP's into full time pets.

I will take your females when you decide to turn them into pets.lol
howard

You sure you don't mean all the MALES? LOL.

Nothing could be as sickening (python-wise) as the giant trade in WC ball pythons... it's to the point that so few people are breeding USCB normals that you can't get them at wholesale prices... which drives demand for cheap WCs even higher. Not that I can blame people for not breeding normals when they can't sell them for more than peanuts. But it's still sad. That issue is much more important to me than a few people getting ripped off- if you want true hets, buy from a trusted source. Oh well, I'm just a pet store employee, not a BP breeder.

Erin B.

Nothing could be as sickening (python-wise) as the giant trade in WC ball pythons...

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Why is this "sad" exactly?

Hmmm... a species that acclimates well to captivity with a minimal amount of TLH (Tender loving husbandry), has really low death totals at the time of arrival, wild caught animals have become a sustainable industry in the areas they occur in, with an emphasis on responsible collection, giving a sorely needed economic boost to the area and it's a species that, while not as ideal as say a cornsnake or a cal king, I would trust in the hands of a total beginner with the knowledge that it'll probably be fine. Add in the fact that habitat preservation as a side effect of collection for the pet trade is keeping dozens of species alive and flourishing where they otherwise might not be.

What a terrible thing that is... boo hoo hoo, these animals are taken out of the wild in small enough numbers to maintain a sustainable breeding population, have parasites removed and are kept at ideal temperatures with plenty of food for the rest of their life! The unjustness of it! The sheer anti-petaness! Won't someone PLEASE think of the ball pythons!

Two Issues

1. Demand drives sales. I wish the buying public would not try to become millionaires overnight. This drives the demand and opens the door for the thieves and scammers. Everyone is looking to get into the high end market without being willing to put the time and money into the venture. This makes a high demand for "hets" which allow all of these scammers a fruitful field to play in. I get this in the bearded dragon arena all the time "Do you have any adult females that are high end and ready to breed?", like those are the ones I'm going to sell. Buy hets from reliable breeders (not much protection from a large name going bad but better than throwing a dart at the KS classifieds). One of the disadvantages of being a small/"new guy on the block" is the lack of reputation to help sales, part of any business.

2. I'm concerned less on the collecting end as what really makes me hot, the other end of the supply chain. Pet stores that don't know how to take care of what they sell, and sell inferior animals. We just recently opened a reptile store and I'm amazed at what people tell me that other stores have passed on. "Ball pythons normally have to be force fed, just how they are" etc. Ball pythons are inexpensive to keep in a store environment, hold them for a week or two to make sure they eat properly before giving them to little tommy!


Ok, I got a number 3. People that buy from known scammers. IF a guy has a 20 page post on the BOI about how poor his animals, service, het issues and yet they buy. Support the right people in the industry. When the scammers can't sell anything they'll go away, they don't have what it takes for the long haul (by definition).

Newbies + WC Ball pythons will never be a good thing. And newbies are the ones who end up with them, because they're cheap. There's a lot of unhappy ball pythons, and a lot of people turned off of reptile keeping because their first experience with an 'easy' snake ended badly. So to me that's the worst aspect of the ball python trade. Now if I were a PETA member I would have said they should be banned, along with puppies. Hey, adopt one until there are none, right?

Erin B.


(PS I work at an evil puppy pandering pet store. I'd literally say 80% of snake owners coming in to buy food have a ball. So I'm basing this on talking to them, not just pulling it out of the air.)

Newbies + WC Ball pythons will never be a good thing. And newbies are the ones who end up with them, because they're cheap.

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What? Experienced people don't like a bargain?

While most new keepers would have a better experience with a captive bred animal of a different species, for every person who buys a ball, has serious problems and decides they don't like reptiles, there are dozens who either had no problems, or worked through them and became far more educated because of it, REALLY falling in love with the hobby. Here at Fauna we're a kind of deceptive group, the majority of the regular posters are a bit more experienced and were probably dealing with reptiles in some fashion before the bearded dragon and leopard gecko boom that broke open the common market (anyone remember the iguana boom? THAT was a nightmare of dead animals and idiot people). I've worked in pet related retail and yes, there are some people who shouldn't own their ball python, but they strike me as the types who'd have had problems regardless of what species they got or where it was born. A lot of people have a ball as their first snake or first reptile. They do well, the snake does well and they have a great time. Sure, balls are a bit more delicate than cornsnakes or cal kings, but it's not like they're WC hydrophiidae that'll die if you look at them crosseyed, they're troopers. They're BUILT to be troopers.

The wild collection of ball pythons has no negative aspects. Not a one.

That's why I stick with boas Yes I know they get big, but they are big puppy dogs. Ball pythons are like the same, but I'd rather be away from the people scamming more ball pythons then boa's. I'm sure the are a lot of boa scammers, but I just see the proces of ball python morphs out there, wow, that's a lot of money for a "fire ball" $100,000.
I like seeing them, thats good eye candy though.

Crooks, Demand, WC BP.

As far as crooks goes, their everywhere. Thats nothing new the bp market pretty much opened its doors by all the morphs.
Demand, well you have a couple big breeders making a bunch of new strains that no one else has yet or very few have and can basically set their own prices. What "I" think is people should be upset at other people for purchasing a $100,000.00 Fireball pair, if people didn't pay that price it would come down but sorry to say people do pay that price, not to hammer on just the Fireballs theirs a few others up their.

WCs, Seamus said it pretty good, I agree.