Unopened bags

[Josh@Outbackreps]

I will let the custamers answer their experience, but mites are not native to Africa, so no times.

 

[B&C Ball Pythons]

I think I remember someone getting a ghana import from Ben Siegel and it ended up being a het highway. Not 100% positive, but remember something along those lines. Talk about striking the lottery if it's true.

 

[Josh@Outbackreps]

A lot of those suttle animals have passed threw like that.

We have gotten fires, vanillas, and low grade calicos in our normal shipments before... when a lot of babies hatch all at once and the Africans are trying to get them all ready to ship and pick out visual morphs they miss a lot of stuff, and if they go into shed when they are getting ready to ship which is very common it makes it harder for them to tell whats a $15 normal, and a really nice odd ball.. it happens every year ...

 

[deborahbroadus]

A lot of those suttle animals have passed threw like that.

We have gotten fires, vanillas, and low grade calicos in our normal shipments before... when a lot of babies hatch all at once and the Africans are trying to get them all ready to ship and pick out visual morphs they miss a lot of stuff, and if they go into shed when they are getting ready to ship which is very common it makes it harder for them to tell whats a $15 normal, and a really nice odd ball.. it happens every year ...

That would be buying directly from Ghana with no middleman, I believe we are talking about buying "unopened" bags from breeders? (could have misunderstood).

How many breeders would actually NOT pick over what they received first, and then assemble a mish-mash of what was left that they didn't want and sell it as "unopened?" What I've experienced of "human nature" doesn't give me much faith...so, personally, I would pass.

I'd spend my money on more profitable avenues.

 

[Temporalis_Enterprises]

The babies that come in the baby bags are from an importer. They're C.H. babies that usually haven't even had their first shed.

 

[David Reid]

Here is my take, again, on Unopened bags:

1-you have to trust the person you are buying them from.
2-unopened means supposedly, the person you are buying from got in a crate full of bags of Balls, and takes the bags out of the crate and puts them directly in the mail to you, without opening the bags. See #1, you have to trust the person you are dealing with. And, someone put the snakes in the bag, somewhere, so trust me, they ARE SORTED prior to you getting them.
3-do you have room in your Quarantine rack?
4-do you have space to house your 10 plus new snakes that have not fed, and may or may not be healthy. I know that I would not want to house the unopened bag snakes in the same house as my collection, but that is just me. I have honestly had really good luck with the handful of CH snakes I have, but, they have all been purchased from reputable people and are well started...eating, drinking, and overall healthy in appearance.
5-two bags of normals, 20 snakes, will set you back about what a pair of Pastels will set you back.
6-I have seen it compared to buying a lotto ticket, but the top prize is usually a Granite looking normal, is that REALLY a prize?
7-I could go on, but I won't. I have yet to see someone buy an unopened bag and hit a big jackpot. Do you know where all these babies are from, and how they were aquired? And trust me, selling normals to make your money back is not as easy as it sounds, especially when there are nice, feeding CB normals by the hundreds from reputable breeders.
If it is for you, good luck, but I think most will be stuck with normals that are hard to sell, and take way more work than anticipated...getting them to drink, eat, and thrive.

 

[Temporalis_Enterprises]

The thing is, if you're buying those bags you are taking a gamble, a gamble that very well might pay off. How many groundbreaking Ball Python morphs are very subtle? It's a crap shoot for sure, but that's the risk you take. These snakes are C.H. from Africa, they haven't even shed out yet. They're as good as C.B. babies. Maybe you should buy a couple "lottery tickets" and see if you pop out anything cool. Your prize may be a neat Granite, Yellow Belly, or as Josh said, a low white Calico, Fire or Vanilla. As stated it's a gamble, but the actual babies regardless of genetics are as good as C.B.

 

[David Reid]

I think it is Unopened Bag time again....

Dave

 

[j_dunlavy]

I will let the custamers answer their experience, but mites are not native to Africa, so no times.

in the 1990's the pet shop I worked at would get imports every year. These imports never had mites but were loaded with ticks (and god knows what else was inside them). I recall manually removing hundreds of ticks from the 6 sub-adults we got one year; I would put the removed ticks in a cup of denatured alcohol to kill them, there were sooooo many....

Unopened bags are basically another clever marketing scheme to help move some of the thousands of CH balls imported every year. It's pure profit for the sellers.

Those selling them like to talk about the chances of getting this or that but the fact is very little is going to get by the people who are actually putting the snakes in the bag in Africa. You'd have better odds playing roulette in Vegas than getting a morph from an unopened bag.

I too equate it to the selling of gravid imported females. Neither practice is what I consider a proud part of our hobby.

I think there is this mentality in the ball python community (at least with newcomers) that there is all this money to be made. The fact is that very few people are going to make any real money from the discovery of a new morph; in other words, don't quit your day job. To me snakes are a great hobby and I hope to make a few dollars but have no delusions of becoming the next BHB.
I'm not a big fan of importation as there are plenty of captive bred animals around, why bring in so many more animals that will not be valued for what they are...living, breathing, beautiful animals. I equate the big ball farms to "snake mills," not that much different than a puppy mill IMO.

Getting back to the morphs being sorted out: I recall a "SnakebytesTV" episode where Brian talked about being contacted by a buyer in Africa about a strange looking ball (the pinstripe); so yes, these farmers are sorting out what they know they can make more money on and going strait to the big boys with these high dollar animals most of the time. Just because the bag is unopened does not mean it has not been sorted.

I'll buy my balls captive bred sans parasites/diseases. (I still quarantine them)

 

[David Reid]

I think it is Unopened Bag time again....

Dave
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[magicboa]

Nope-no baby bags for me either. There's enough snakes here in the US for everyone. Want new blood? Buy from another reputable breeder.