General economy affecting imports?

Maybe it's just me but it seems it has not been a very exciting season for ball python imports. There's not that many unique animals out there even from importers that were known from bringing interesting animals from Africa. To make matters worse there are others trying to push the limit with the "creativity" of their new names. Has anyone noticed anything similar or is it just me that's getting "picky" with age?

Not much out there at all but I did manage to get 1.1 pair of incredible (at least in my opinion) animals and a female striped one.
Other than that, I haven't really seen anything that stands out. Usually around this time there are lots of interesting animals.
I think the "name game" is prevelant every year but I haven't seen anyone stating the CH animals are actually proven animals yet although I have seen a few ads that were in the "grey" area.

Well, every year importers try to sell first the more common animals leaving the unique for later in the season. Granted this year started a couple of weeks later but you are absolutely right, so far nothing really exciting. It would be interesting to know if imports were reduced this year. It certainly seems like it, even the number of people offering normal babies seem to have dropped.

Best

Dan G.

Not an importer, but we do buy a large percentage of the special that come into the country each year.

This year was weird, everything was late, and I think because of that the demand wasn't as big as everyone didn't get "c.h fever" like all the other years. C.B babies started hatching when the c.h came in so it wasn't as much excitement for babies for one, and no one needs normal females anymore.

I bought 200 specials and 200 selects from the big order that came in, got some nice stuff, but not as nice as last year. There was a TON of cool animals being offered but the price was so high in Africa for the cool stuff that no one bought it. I never thought I would be paying $250 for a male harlequin from Africa! (But I did.)

The fuel cost seems to have killed things as well, freight has gone up so much that it cost more to ship the animals than anything so the normals are harder and harder to sell. When you buy c.h from Africa you cannot just buy specials, if you want say, 500 specials ( anything from minor granites-lavender albino's) you have to buy at least 2000-3000 normals in order to get them at a decent price. Take that along with the ever dropping value of c.b morphs and the $$ is not there any more.

Lat year everyone was selling cool c.h, this year I think I have seen 1 or 2 other people selling specials and that's it. I asked about getting more and it looks like there is not to much more as far as really nice stuff.

I was also told by my supplier that every year he would get some bush baby animals that were amazing. These babies that were born in the wild not ranched, were the biggest source of the truly spectacular animals, they collected these to fill the orders of c.h but this year he only had 1 yellow belly come in that was a bush animal.

Last year I know of 3 dealers that between the 3 of them brought in 60,000 this year they did 25000-30000.

As for names, a lot of animals are named or described in Africa and the name gets passed on to the seller, but I have also seen some real crazy b.s this year. I like the "sleeper" ball. The seller says its one of there big projects, and has huge genetic value but its a c.h 08' that looks normal...

Hopefully things will change as c.h are the best part of ball pythons.

A 50% drop in imports can easily be felt in the market. It would be interesting to know how many of these unusual animals have found their way to Europe rather than the US. With each Euro at 1.6 dollars and shorter shipping distances Stefan Broghammer is probably "raking them".

I think a lot of odd ball animals made it into other Markets, anywhere from Europe, to Thialand, as the number of buyers over seas has risen greatly.

This year I played it safe, and didn't go for any high $$ animals as they were going for more $$ this year, due to the decline in sales of normal babies. The few people who bought a lot of higher end c.h should do well, but with the way things are I felt it would be safer to do more U.S C.B Morphs this year, than with higher $$ c.h animals.

I think we are going to see a lot of interesting animals come over as w.c bush babies later in the year, due to the lower volume of sales. With less sales the trappers are not looking as hard for specialty animals, and the buyers outside the U.S don't buy anywhere near the volume we do over here.

Hopefully next year the economy will be better, so we can see a good year for c.h again, this year was pretty disappointing.

Every time I put in gas, I think, that could have been 16 c.h balls......