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Red light flashing for ghosts?

That is insane!! Well, I am going that route and willing to take my chances. I will breed my male to multiple females and also work towards some pastel hypos and hopefully more! Its pretty exciting..And pricey! I really dont believe they will hit $300 by next year though...
 
With the prices dropping I may actually get a pastel next year, if they are at the $300 range, they are pretty and I would not mind having one around for fun.

Is there a picture out on the web of a Pastel pied? I have been looking but have yet to see one.
 
It will happen... but when?

Pastels will drop below $300, but I bet not next year. The people selling for $550 shipped might be scams or selling bad feeders, or might just need quick money. Many reasons can be thought of. I bet the price stays above or at $500 for a few years because most people will be trying to make their money back, and dont want to accept much less. That said, when they all finally accept the prices have to come down I bet they fall like a rock. I bet in 4 years they will be double or less than the price of normals. Now that all said, I put all my eggs in the recessive egg basket. In 4 years when the doms are way down in price and I have good breeding stock of homo recessives I will start trading/buying doms and co doms. I will have pastel pieds, but I will most likely buy a het pied pastel female in a few years to breed to my yet to exsist male piebald.

Ben
American Tropics
 
Junkyard said:
With the prices dropping I may actually get a pastel next year, if they are at the $300 range, they are pretty and I would not mind having one around for fun.

Is there a picture out on the web of a Pastel pied? I have been looking but have yet to see one.
Get a rag, you'll need something to mop up the drool......

















sk_pastel_pied.jpg
 
I am currently dragging my tongue on the ground, what a trip the pastel pied is!!!!
 
I know breeding for reg pastels I will NEVER get my money back with the way the market on them is dropping.

This makes no sense to me, all you need is 1 clutch to get your money back.........
Buy a male this season at $600ish breed him the season after next and sell your first female for more than the initial cost. Not very hard in my eyes.




The people selling for $550 shipped might be scams or selling bad feeders, or might just need quick money.

WRONG, WRONG and WRONG.
I'm selling in that range and you can see the animals here and on my site, how is this a scam?

Mine range from 1-2 months old and weigh between 100-200 grams, YEAH, they are bad feeders.

As far as money, still a hobby here, once again this season a great deal of what we produce will be held back.
 
No, you need a 1.1 of pastel het pied so you can try to make SUPER pastel pieds. :cool:

I like these too, lav albino pieds.....
05_clutch_115_hatched_9.jpg


And these are nice as well......Lesser plat pinstripes.....
05_clutch_122_hatched_12.jpg
 
Who is selling pastels for $2800 a pair?

Al,

You are prodably suggesting it's too much and I agree. Some are still "asking" close to $2,000 for females and $1,000 for males. Actually selling them for that money? Very difficult...
 
NEWReptiles said:
Who is selling pastels for $2800 a pair?


Pretty much all the high end breeders out there..I agree with you though that the drop will not be as precipitous as some people think but it will happen. Thats why I am trying to get in on the recessives at the same time as the codoms. But as you mentioned, buy a pastel and make your money back in the first year. Then its all profit...
 
Jamie,

This is just an opinion though but we are living in our own private world without looking what’s happening outside. With fuel at over $3 a gallon the “disposable income” of many people is disappearing fast. That means people are substituting the “wants” (a fancy ball python) for the real “needs” money to go every day to work. I’m not going to say the morph market will completely crash but if this keeps going as it is it will certainly feel the hit. Just look at the repeated ads or (if you have the money) make an offer for an animal and see what happens. I paid $1,200 for an hetero male pied last year. It was a good deal at the time. Right now I can buy them for 4 times less, is a 400% price drop is not a market crashing I don’t know what is. I’m not making the same mistake twice.

Regards.
 
Right now I can buy them for 4 times less, is a 400% price drop is not a market crashing I don’t know what is. I’m not making the same mistake twice.

It should've read:

Right now I can buy them for 4 times less, if a 400% price drop is not a market crashing, I don’t know what is. I’m not making the same mistake twice.
 
Listen to Al, he knows what he istalking about! I have pastels for $600 male, $1200 female, $1700 a pair right now! It is not a scam, they eat just fine and are great looking. Why assume that because some guy posts them for $2800 that they are selling for that? Don't you think that at shows if they are $2800 on a table (which they are not) that that seller will take much less when you wave cash in the face? Don't assume it is a scam when the people who are offering them can back themselves up with references and positive feedback from customers.

You see mojaves all over the place on the net for $6000-8000 each, but if you had been at Daytona and had cash you could have bought them for $3000 each without trying! It is just how things are. You get some saturation in the market and sales slow because the economy is so soft right now, unemployment is high, fuel prices are crazy, etc. and people are not buying the animals unless they can get a deal. I have told several people this year that I want to pay certain prices for a couple animals and they thought I was low a few months ago but now they are all seeing my prices as very reasonable.

As for pastel prices, all mutations of all herps go through a series of plateaus. You will see it over and over on different mutations. They start at a high of $10,000-25,000, then they drop in increments. Take the pinstripe, they started at $35,000, the next year, $25,000, this year you can get one for $10,000-$12,000. Next year they will not go too far below $10,000. In 2-3 years they wioll $5,000.

I bought my first pastel males from Mark Bell and Brian Barcyzk a few years back. I paid $1500 each for them. I produced 12 pastels from normal females I bred them to my first season with them, selling for $750-1500 each. Any way you do the math it works well.

If you bought a male pastel now at $600-700, fed it for a year, and bred it to 4 females (let's figure conservative), and you got 2 clutches (assume low production), let's say the clutches are only 5 eggs and 6 eggs (again conservative), so out of 11 babies let's say you get 4 pastels (you should technically get 1-2 more but I get nailed on the odds all the time). Let's say the pastels are 2.2. You sell them really cheap at $350 for males and $900 for females. So that's $2500. You invested maybe $1000 with food and electric heat included. Where else can you get a super pessemistic outcome of 2 1/2 times your money on a 1 year investment?
 
As far as money, still a hobby here, once again this season a great deal of what we produce will be held back.

Exactly the point I was trying to make in the GBD forum. The "big breeders" with all the overhead costs are are going to be hit hard with the current economic situation. The hobbyist that doesn't depend on selling for a living can cut prices, adjust to a tighter budget, and keep going.

Regards.
 
I'm waiting on picking up a pastel male. I've seen prices from 1,600 tp 600. And as much as I would love to buy on now, I have to spend the money on gas.
 
evansnakes said:
If you bought a male pastel now at $600-700, fed it for a year, and bred it to 4 females (let's figure conservative), and you got 2 clutches (assume low production), let's say the clutches are only 5 eggs and 6 eggs (again conservative), so out of 11 babies let's say you get 4 pastels (you should technically get 1-2 more but I get nailed on the odds all the time). Let's say the pastels are 2.2. You sell them really cheap at $350 for males and $900 for females. So that's $2500. You invested maybe $1000 with food and electric heat included. Where else can you get a super pessemistic outcome of 2 1/2 times your money on a 1 year investment?
Are you factoring in the cost of buying the females? Let's assume that either someone is buying females for this project or their other females are all hets or homo for something and are already using them for that purpose. That means they either have to purchase the females or pull them off another lucrative project like pieds or albinos. The price is probably rising every day on clean breedable females with everyone and their brother trying to get into Balls and looking at co-doms for their first projects. I'm seeing a lot getting $400-600 each out there. Any breeder that has them has no reason to sell them off cheap, they can just throw their pastel or spider male in there next season and make more than they'd get selling the female off.
 
I missed out on the last bunch of posts somehow. This is an interesting topic for sure and I fully believe that Pastels are still a good investment especially in the scenario that Evan threw out there. That describes me exactly. I might not sell them in the end but turn them around in trade for het pairs of something else I am interested in producing. Ill still have another 20 years to produce Pastels and whatever I trade the hatchlings for will make hopefully produce and make even more.

I love America!

Now, as far as the huge range in price, it seems as if the big breeders are keeping the prices at what they want to get for the babies because they can afford to and the smaller ones are doing what they need to to feed their families in this crappy economy we are faced with. I don't think either is wrong and if you have the same quality Pastel for $600 that someone else is selling for $1000, then I would definitely consider purchasing from you. I purchased this first Pastel from someone who I respect and wanted to give business to for the help he has given me in my first attempts at building a small breeding business. A lot of the big guys wont give you the time of day when it comes to questions that could put a dent in their business and this guy has gone out of his way to help and advise me. It doesn't hurt that he is allowing me to pay the purchases off in a longer amount of time than anyone else offers. That is valuable to me with a huge amount of bills that need to be paid regardless of what I want to do with what is right now my hobby. Hope this all made sense because I am in no mood to proofread! :)

Jamie
 
Why would you buy an adult female that is either wild caught, long term wild caught or an animal that would either not breed or produce for $500-1200 when you can get true CB USA babies for $25-50 each and raise them yourself? You have the whole life history of the animal and you know what to expect from it. The adult females I breed now I raised myself from babies and could not be happier with them. You inherit somebody else's problems trying to get a quick fix on adult females. Let's face it, nobody is going to sell any really good adult females unless they can get much more than they are worth.
 
Every once in awhile you come across some wc or ch females that are interesting. I happened to pick up a female with a shattered pattern that is wc. I only spent $60 for her and a reduced wc male that came with her.
 
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