yes I agree that I am very disappointed in the puma prices. They are worth more than that, but they are a two gene animal with one being yellow belly. We knew they would.
for those reading but not sure on the market or topic, here goes:
As Clark said, supply and demand. When a gene is new it has a way inflated price because people don't have it. Lets say there is this new gene that everyone loves called an "unobtainium" male and I want $50,000 for it. So you have 3 females that are lets say normal. It gets to breeding size (too young, but of weight and producing sperm) so you breed it to them. Its young so you only get 4 eggs from each. 12 eggs total and half are "unobtainums." You keep 2 girls and sell the other one for $20,00 and all three males for $25,000. You just made $45,000 after your initial investment. Now 10 other people have males (the original seller made some as well and sold them). Next year there are 40 more males sold, and 100 the following. Now that 151 people have them, the general public really take notice and get interested. The price falls in the $10,000-$15,000 range. Next year 300 people have them and they are $5000-$7500. You get the picture. The people that make out are the ones that have the initial large investment. There is still some backdoor deals, but no undercutting. All snakes will fall to their resting place price wise. No matter how much the snake it, it still costs the same to keep.
Now for pricing and crashing the market.......when everyone is selling a snake for a certain amount and you follow suit, that's economics. I have managed a business for many years and sometimes you must even lose money to make money. If something is on your floor and it doesn't sell, discount it. Its paid for and your money is tied up there when it could buy something that sells five times over and you get a profit from each time. Now as far as snakes go.......those 3 or 4 snakes can be sold to help you buy one that you need for a project, traded to help your project, or help you with any supplies/food to help your collect thrive. If everyone is selling a snake for $500 and you ask $400, that's not crashing a market. If everyone wants to go to the others and demand $400 that's their option. I have budged, I have held out for twice the going rate and got it because of quality. Everyone had dollar menus, you choose where you eat. If I only have enough for the dollar menu than that's what I'm getting. If I have more and you cant convince me to spend the extra $100.....is yours really worth it?
Crashing a market......your never gonna see this coming.....the banana! Two and a half years ago Jon Levy had one listed on his site for $50,000 "male maker".......what are the prices today?! How did we go from $50,000 to $500 in not even 3 years? Read section above. Now know that at the time of his listing there were already close to 1000 bananas in a few collections. 6 months later I knew of someone who had 200 by himself. I knew the market would drop, but not like it did. I figured I would wait and get mine later once it leveled off around $3000 for awhile. Well last year I had a guy I done trades and purchases with drop his prices to $3000 while everyone else was at $4500-$5500. He got ahold of me and said he would hook me up and give me one for $2000 plus paypal fees and shipping. Figured we were there so I bought. The next week they were $2000 shipped. Week later $1200 and mojave banana was $2000. When I called him on it he said "I cannot predict the market!" The market was still up there and he advertised his prices everywhere because he had a good amount of them. That's crashing a market, and all the morphs have suffered. That's it in a nutshell, along with over production.
