What's with the price crashing?

I think ANYONE who pays good money for a snake becomes an immediate competitor because now that person will definitely try to breed and make money off of that snake or at least recoup the money that was invested in said snake (probably why there are so many price-crashers selling newborn morphs). By good money I mean a lot more money than a normal snake typically sells for. If you only want your buyers to be buying pets and not breed the snakes, breed inexpensive normals or inexpensive morphs of the popular snakes. I bet most of those sales will truly be just for pet snakes. If you sell morphs and they're worth more than 3X the cost of a normal you're probably selling to a breeder or an aspiring breeder. Only people who have lots of money will buy a morph for good money and just keep it as a pet. Remember that prices reflect demand and every year the numbers of any morph increase exponentially.

Originally Posted by RidgeTop Reptiles

But why should the price have to drop... its not like snakes are a staple of life... they are an extra.... you DONT have to have them. So why should the price drop... either you can afford it now.. or you will save up a bit

Sorry, but...that's exactly why the price drops. There's less demand for the snakes in times when people can't afford such luxuries. Because there is less demand, there is often a surplus of supply. Which results in lower prices in order to sell the existing items (or in this case...snakes).

There ya go. Supply and demand in a nutshell, lol.

Not to mention, it's likely a case of lower level breeders selling lower level products to lower level buyers. If you think about it...they're not really your competition. They're in a whole different league. People who are buying at those prices don't care enough about quality to save up to buy from a lot of the great breeders here! And when it really comes down to it...would you want those less-than-knowledgeable, less-than-capable buyers to be buying your animals? I know I wouldn't...

Jinx; I think to some extent the big breeders have pushed some of us to looking to smaller breeders (combined with the weak economy). Take a look at Bob Clark's prices; they haven't budged since 2008, even on single co-dom morphs (spiders, mojaves, tiger retics). And yeah, he's got nice snakes; I have a retic from him that I bought back in 08. Gorgeous animal.

But so do some of the smaller, or just lesser known breeders. So when I want something I look at them. I look for reviews here, I may look for photos of the parents, etc. And I've gotten snakes I'm sure are 100% the quality I'd have gotten from Bob Clark or Mike Wilbanks for less. And I would not have paid what they were charging even if the animals weren't available for less. This includes a pair of tiger albinos (one purple, one lavender).

There's a middle ground between blowing money on a name and buying cheap bottom of the barrel animals; I think given the combination of bad economy and the increasing number of breeders, more people are going to that middle ground.

No offense intended, paul! I think you're right! The economy definitely makes people look at different alternative options. There's definitely a middle ground, but there are also some very reputable breeders selling high quality stuff and some very shady breeders selling poor quality stuff. There can be no light without dark. And as such, there are definitely shades of gray!

Also, I want to bring up that there's definitely a difference between breeders who are responsible, but not as well known...and breeders who are irresponsible or just downright bad! I hope I didn't step on any toes! :O

I always love these discussions...

I honestly think we're just all, collectively, shooting ourselves in the foot. Why can a petstore sell a Normal Ball Python for $100, but we're cutting our throats and selling Pastels (male) for $50-75? We aren't selling wholesale to one another, no bulk quantities here.

By reducing the price of the base morphs, the combos are also dropping. Bees for $400? Blue-Eyed Luecs for $1k?

If I was interested in this as a source of income rather then a self-sustaining hobby I would run screaming in the other direction!

Triplemoon; Petsmart here sells normals for as low as 29.99 on sale, 59.99 regularly (I buy dog food there, what can I say...I always have to look at the herps).

I'd say part of it is that those of us that know enough to go to breeders aren't going to pay petstore prices if we're buying from the breeder...we've removed a middleman after all.
And like I said earlier...BPs may have just hit that point. There's tons of morphs, tons of different combos that are regularly produced, tons of production of each morph...and only so many people want them. I don't care how cheap black pastels or cinnies are, I don't like 'em. Pieds? maybe when they hit down to 300 or so. Spiders? I got one as a pet this year for 150. Demand isn't infinite for these animals so every breeder that produces them is competing for the same market...they can compete on price or quality, or a mix of the two. And given that "quality" can be partially subjective (do you like high or low contrast albinos? high or low white pieds?), and hard to verify for the objective part of it (feeding, healthy, etc) until well after the sale...

It's like corns--cornsnakes haven't been (generally) high dollar animals in a long time. You can buy 2-3 recessive gene animals for dirt cheap. Because they've been bred to hell and back. yeah there's some few morphs that still command high dollar, but most of them? 30-100 bucks.

Shoot wish we could edit in this board :-/
That post mostly focused on balls, but I think it's at least partially the same with boas and other long time "popular" snakes....yeah new people are coming in faster than old people are leaving (I think/hope) but we've still got a limited market.
You don't really hear about price crashing too much in colubrids (at least I haven't and I do more with colubrids than boids). I don't know if it's because they've gotten less exposure, or because their prices just never climbed so high on the whole, so they don't have as far to drop? Or something else? I mean, the bullsnake has tons of morphs...so do fl. kings...some of the combo animals in particular aren't cheap. They may not be 1200+ but they can be mid to high hundreds (hypo WS fl kings are several hundred for instance)...?? I don't know why

Originally Posted by paulWTAMU

Triplemoon; Petsmart here sells normals for as low as 29.99 on sale, 59.99 regularly (I buy dog food there, what can I say...I always have to look at the herps).

I'm not referring to imported animals that come in at $3-5 a head.

Originally Posted by paulWTAMU

Shoot wish we could edit in this board

You can if you are a Contributor.

Originally Posted by Utta

and another reason the price is dropping: people are breeding just to breed. They don't care about quality. So they produce cheep low quality animals they figure will move fast. And there right :/

Let's price a lesser that's a low quality (say its the worst in your clutch) $50 or even $100 cheeper then your "hold backs". What do you think will sell faster? Someone just wanting a pretty pet or someone who doesn't care about quality will buy the cheeper one. Causing cheeper quality animals to show up next season.

Amen..... Everybody and their brother has started breeding ball python morphs.... People are cranking out babies like crazy... did ya'll think the price was going to stay high... that is the nature of the morph industry.... You NEVER get what you paid.... that's why I steer clear of it...

I really feel bad for the breeders who have been at it for years... all these overnight ball python bandwagon folks are killing their profits.... but then again... they bought their original stock from someone..

I think the main issue is... if someone spends that kind of money on a snake... it is silly NOT to breed it.... how many people do you know buys a 3000$ snake just to look at....

In the end.... people have the right to sell the snakes they produce for any price they desire... Some of the original prices of some of these morphs is just ridiculous...

Originally Posted by paulWTAMU

BPs may have just hit that point. There's tons of morphs, tons of different combos that are regularly produced, tons of production of each morph...and only so many people want them. I don't care how cheap black pastels or cinnies are, I don't like 'em. Pieds? maybe when they hit down to 300 or so. Spiders? I got one as a pet this year for 150.

I'm totally with you on that. I don't find many of the BP morphs that appealing, simply because they don't look all that different from the normals, to my uneducated eye anyway...I'd kill for a bumblebee, though!