• Responding to email notices you receive.
    **************************************************
    In short, DON'T! Email notices are to ONLY alert you of a reply to your private message or your ad on this site. Replying to the email just wastes your time as it goes NOWHERE, and probably pisses off the person you thought you replied to when they think you just ignored them. So instead of complaining to me about your messages not being replied to from this site via email, please READ that email notice that plainly states what you need to do in order to reply to who you are trying to converse with.

  • IMPORTANT! PLEASE READ!! About the Google Adsense ads being displayed

    =====================
    Posted 08/15/2025
    =====================


    Yeah, I know. They are a pain in the butt. But they pay the bills to keep my server running. Just a fact of life, I am afraid.

    Want to get rid of them? Simple. Just become a Contributor level member or above and they will be gone. -> Please click HERE."

    Is that too much for me to ask of you to keep this site running? Well, sorry about that. I too wish I could get everything for free. But alas.....

    =====================
    Addendum: 01/10/2026
    =====================


    Google Adsense ad revenue for December, 2025 was just $30 over the cost of the lease for the server running this site. So, in effect, the money providing the incentive for me to continue running this site is coming SOLELY from the paid memberships and sponsorships here. Which honestly ain't much....

Red light flashing for ghosts?

The BoidSmith

The BoidSmith

Blocked because of INVALID email address!
INVALID email address
Joined
Feb 7, 2002
Messages
5,971
Reaction score
42
Points
48
Age
117
Location
Midwest
Just a few months ago there was no one willing to sell female ghosts (at least for “logical” prices). Now there are several being offered at the same time and although still pricey, at least there’s not an outrageous price tag on them. If one thing I have learned with the ball python market is that whenever a morph price reaches a point where I might consider investing on it, the price has plummets a few months thereafter. Maybe Murphy’s laws applied to the ball python market or just selectively to myself. Anyone has an explanation as of why this might be happening now?

Regards.
 
I have no explanation for you, but I noticed the same thing as you, the Ghosts seem to be dropping in price quite a bit. Maybe they just are not sought after as much as the Pieds, Platnium, Majoves, and Snows. Heck I even saw male Pastels are now being sold for under $600, which I may have to go for. I guess with so many people breeding them the population just exploded for them(Pastels) I personally love the Ghosts and think they are awesome to have.
 
I like them too and the fact is that I'm looking for a female. The only problem is that I', $2,500 short! ;) If you know of anyone giving one away let me know. That is if you are not interested in her of course!
 
The BP market is NUTS.
I listed a female normal BP for sale on Friday. Priced at $350. You would not believe the number of responses I got. She was sold for the listed price with the payment paypalled to me in less than an hour!
Prices fluctuate SO much. You see normal BP's going for $750 at times and $250 at other times. I would love to pick up a mojave but who knows what the price will be next year? I was selling granite BP's at $150 a pair shipped last year. Now look at the prices. Triple that for males!
It seems the only morph that has steadily held it's price are the albinos.
Spiders dropped (they should drop even more if you ask me-why pay $1000's for a wobble head snake which is obviously a genetic disorder).
The ivories have plummeted if you look at what they brought just a few months ago to what they are listed for now.
 
The ivories have plummeted if you look at what they brought just a few months ago to what they are listed for now.
Click to expand...

One of the beauties of ball pythons (at least from my perspective) is their pattern and different shades of color they can display. Believe me if someone had offered me an ivory for $1,000 a year ago I would’ve probably graciously declined the offer. Well, on the other hand I could’ve sold it for $100,000 and have a mark-up of $99,000. I’ve never been too business savvy ;)
 
Normal females, gotta have an adult right now! breeding season's coming!

My wife and I were talking about all this just recently. The pricese are crazy. It seems ball pythons are the snakes to have right now. With how crazy the morphs are being bred out, in the future the normals will be the rare snakes to have.

Look at how many cornsnake morphs are out there. I have not seen a normal cornsnake in a petstore in years, they are actually hard to find because the stores are able to sell the morphs so well. "They are not so blan looking" Though the price of morphs and normals are close to the same anymore(granted there are some pricey morph cornsnakes).
 
simple laws of supply side economics, a few years ago hypos were a fraction of the price they are now. Once people saw the full potential of the gene combined with others (hypo spider, hypo pinstripe, hypo pastel, etc) the price increased. Now they are staying at a level as there are fewer in the market place than there have been as people are still breeding other genes to them, but there is also a bit less demand as the people who were hard core needing them went out and paid for them. In a couple years they will come down a bit but don't make the mistake of comparing them to the pastel. The simple reccessive will stay much more stable than a dominant every time.
 
wobble head

In regard to the spider, what do you mean by a "wobble head snake" ??

Heather Blackborow
 
They tend to not be able to hold their head still.
It is not just one or two of these morphs but a LOT of spiders.
Some don't show it but their offspring do.
You could look at a display at a show with say 5 spiders in it and 3 will have this.
I am convinced it is a neurological problem associated with the morph.
The big breeders will tell you it doesn't affect the snakes. Is that true or do they not want the truth to get out and crash the market on an expensive morph?
 
You can use fancy words like "morph" or "designer" but genetic mutations are just that, mutations. Many caramel albinos are bron with kinked tails and sometimes spines, many spiders have minor neurological problems as d escribed above, some lines of albinos do not eat as well due to inbreeding, etc, etc. You have to expect some potential downside to mutations of genes that are often enhanced by line/in-breeding. Evan Stahl
 
I am going to have to keep my eyes on those, I never heard of the spiders acting funny. I do have a het carmel that just does not eat much, now it is starting to make sense. Of course inbreeding does a lot of things to the bodies, thank you for the info.
 
Does anyone have a real number of spiders that exhibit wobble or caramels with kinks? Is it 1%, 10%, .5%? I have seen these statements in a few places and some heated debates on the subject. I am curious to know if there are some hard numbers out there proving that it is a major issue.
 
I would hope that the numbers are small, its horrible to think about really. It's one thing to produce amazing looking snakes, but..not at the expense of the snake. Wobble, not eating well, kinked tails, these are things we could see and explain, but what about the things we will never know about..like a constant pain because something isn't developed properly, or whatever?
Ugh..wish I hadn't heard any of this.
 
My example of 3 out of 5 was from the Daytona show this past month.

A display with 5 spiders.....3 had the problem.

I would say the number is up around 40% overall.

All of the "morphs" have some type of quirk. It's just that the spider one is very easy to see and there are really a lot more exhibiting this than you might think.

This gets into a heated debate because the large scale breeders don't want to discuss it. They will just say that the ones that exhibit this that it doesn't affect the snake or it will go away in time.

You really have to wonder what is not going on inside that is not apparent.
 
Wow..40% is quite a number to throw out there. I think a bigger sample than 5 is needed..

What kinds of quirk are exhibited in other morphs?

Interesting stuff!

Jamie
 
Albinos tend to be snappy.
The randomly occurring jungles tend to be nervous and tense.
Clowns tend to eat like horses. LOL.
Pieds tend to be finicky eaters.

These are just a few of the things I have noticed over the years. There are probably more quirks as well.
 
I am buying a pair of pastels soon, I know breeding for reg pastels I will NEVER get my money back with the way the market on them is dropping. The hope is that Supers and some of the exotic pastel crosses will allow me to recoup my money. For example pastel pieds, etc. Have you see the pastel pieds........they are little little wet dreams. *drool*
 
Richard,

I am with you too. I just agreed to buy a Pastel male and a pair of 100% het hypos. Pastels wont drop that much that quickly. Even if they do a pair is costing you about $2800 or so, right? I assume in addition to breeding the male to the female to create supers that you plan to breed that male to multiple normal females, right?Males are $700-$1200 right now based on line and color. Even if they drop to $300 (and who knows if they will or even if they will ever go lower than that), you should be able to make enough pastels in the first year to almost cover the $2800. And then its all profit for the next 20 yrs, no matter what they go down to. This is just my opinion and I could be wrong!
 
Did any of that make sense? I just reread it and I think I need to proofread. I also didnt include the fact that you could hatch female pastels from the male pastel to multiple normal female breedings and get quite a bit more for them..

I suck, and Im going to stop babbling now...
 
Well since they are out there at $550 shipped now (I've seen a few at this price) they will be $300 next year I'm sure. Everyone and their mother picked up a ton of normals and a few pastels and are cranking them out at breakneck speeds. At $300 each you need to produce 10 pastels to break even in the first year. You need to hope for large clutch sizes and better than average numbers of pastels per clutch to get that number. Obviously it'll probably take a few years to make your money back but it can be done, especially when you factor in feeding costs and other expenses. The hope though is for big $$$'s mixing pastel with other fun stuff like spider, pied, clown, etc.

Just look how hot pastel looks with clown. :O

bhb_past_clown.jpg
 
Back
Top