Tom Crutchfield: Greatest Reptile Dealer of All Time?

Greetings! (as Tom would say),

Tom Crutchfield is relatively inactive right now (as far as the rest of you know). Nevertheless, I have had nothing but positive experiences in dealing with him. Tom has bought and sold the nicest and rarest reptiles and amphibians of all time and has been a completely honest, kind, and outstanding man. To me, he is the John Wayne of herpetoculture and will often be imitated, but never duplicated. Thank You!

Tom and Chris were always fair with me...I have heard horror stories about other people's deals, but everything I received from them was fantastic...bright yellow and black carpets, solid blue garters, bright red mangrove water snakes...never a problem.

One thing I did notice, was that I never argued price with them...in fact, I would often pay more to have them select out what they thought was best...some of the people that had a tendency to haggle ended up with some mud brown snakes at a discount...


greg

I have never bought a snake from Tom "but I do have one of his snake VIA bci joe and yes I would agree he has "Quality Snake" Just thought I'd add my 0.2 +tax cents

Wow the collective memory is short and I wonder why Bruce you would choose to post this now. When did you buy from Tom? 10 years ago? Tom is one of the most notorious hustlers and criminals of the herp biz. He not only committed a pile of crimes but fled the country to avoid dealing with them. He sold to so many people back in the day, animals that were sick, wrong sex ratios, even shipped people animals that were dead prior to shipping. He lied like crazy about everything having to do with the animals he sold. I avoided Tom for the most part as he did a major number on two good friends of mine in separate deals that were years apart. Did Tom get some neat stuff? Sure he did. He imported tons of stuff and bought tons of stuff from collectors and breeders. Did Tom sell junk? Sure he did. Did Tom misrepresent animals? Sure he did. I think after a bunch of years of Tom being forced out of the animal business by the government and then his voluntary absence since, you have lost site of what Tom really was like as a herp dealer. He did lose a bunch of weight though.

I also have a sense of admiration for Tom Crutchfield. He was the first dealer I was introduced to. I remember when I was younger, our family would take road trips and I would always take his Herpetofauna lists w/ me to study the binomial nomenclature. I didn't buy anything from him until he changed his business to "Reptile Enterprises". I tell ya, that guy had some great connections. All in all, my orders were always a dissappointment. I never recieved an order from Tom C. that wasn't problematic in some way. My friends had similar testimonies. Tom Crutchfield's reputation definitely proceeds him. It's common knowledge that he did have the hook ups, but it's also common knowledge that he is quite the shady character. One story I heard from an associate went something like this.

John Q. Herper: "Hey Tom, I have a problem w/ this monitor you just sent me. It has only 3 legs! What am I supposed to do w/ a 3-legged monitor?"

Tom Crutchfield: " BBQ it"

LOL! True story....so I was told.

Sean P.

Is this the guy your talking about?

http://www.usdoj.gov/opa/pr/1999/April/140enr.htm

Yea, that's him (lol)

Sean

That's him.

O.K.....Cause these guys FOUND him in the jungles of belieze
http://www.ecosafari.com/everglades.html

He mutsa come back!

Check the "Meet our staff" page on that link