What is going on with the Spider and Mojave market?

[Clay Davenport]

if i was going to invest in an animal for the purpose of making money i would go for something with less chance of it losing its value . something like prehensile tail skinks which generally lay 1 or 2 eggs a year .

Prehensile tail skink eggs..... now that would be an amazing sight.


One of the problems with people who are investing in balls is they are treating it like a get rich scheme and they are going into it with one eye shut.
A percentage of the people who are complaining and bemoaning the annual decline in price are ones who paid $7500 for a spider or 15K for a mojave in late '04 and haven't reproduced them yet.
Some people like to give the impression that balls breed like rabbits, sorry but they don't. I don't know how many times I've seen it in forums where someone lays out a theoretical breeding program that they are preparing for and every factor involved is listed as best case scenario, but they are saying it like it's assumed that it will work that way.
They talk about buying a hatchling codom and breeding him at 500 grams and a year of age. Sure some do, but not all. They talk of breeding that one year old to 5 females getting 5 clutches and half of them all being the morph.
Then they talk of buying 10 hatchling females and breeding them all at 2 years of age and what they will produce.
This isn't even counting your chickens before they hatch, it's counting them before the parents are even old enough to lay.
Problems arise in their breeding program, as they always do, and meanwhile the market marches on, and downward, increasing their frustration.

I hate to say it but I can't help but laugh a little when things don't work out exactly like they had it on paper.
The point is, if making money is the goal and the reason for starting the project, then disappointment on some level is a very good possibility. If you're breeding things because you like them, then satisfaction will be had because anything made from them will be a bonus.
A lot of what I'm doing with the balls is exactly what Harald is doing. I'm breeding for specimens I want in my collection. I'm taking the long, as well as more enjoyable route to get what I want. I do have hopes of getting some monetary benefit from the projects as well, but I have no illusions that I'll make tens of thousands of dollars every year.

 

[markface]

my bad on the egg thing

 

[hhmoore]

I don't know how many times I've seen it in forums where someone lays out a theoretical breeding program that they are preparing for and every factor involved is listed as best case scenario, but they are saying it like it's assumed that it will work that way...
This isn't even counting your chickens before they hatch, it's counting them before the parents are even old enough to lay.
Problems arise in their breeding program, as they always do, and meanwhile the market marches on, and downward, increasing their frustration.

I hate to say it but I can't help but laugh a little when things don't work out exactly like they had it on paper.

Are you saying that my thoughts of retiring from my real jobs in a few years when I'm up to my eyeballs in bumblebees are not reality based?? that they are little more than fantasy?. Now THAT sucks!!
Guess it is better to come to this realization now, though. Thanks, Clay.

 

[evansnakes]

I talk to people almost daily who lodge complaints for various reasons on the prices of the dominant gene mutations dropping so rapidly. The reality is that it is and will be the nature of the beast and just like investing in the stock market you would do homework and research on a company to see if your money was safe and well invested in that stock, if you go back and do homework on the reptile indistry you will see patterns in cycles running through everything. Let me explain.

The albino burmese was the first mutation that really hit big dollar. They were huge money, especially for back in that time. You had Bob Clark slowly working on developing that project and holding high prices. Then you had Mark Bell come along and mass produce the project. Due to the large clutch size and Mark approaching the project so aggressively, the price of the snakes went down dramatically in a short period of time, $25,000 to $1000 in about 5 years. Albino burms got to the point a few years back where I was buying them at $35-50 each in quanties all the time. Now people have dropped that project to move to ball pythons and they now wholesale at $110-125 each and are much harder to come by. Some of that has been due to factors outside of the biz, like legal status in some states, but the pyramid stays the same. As volume increases, prices lower and demand increases.

BUT, once the market reaches saturation, then the price has to drop and drop until it finds it's market again. That is what is happening now with all dominant ball morphs. You guys talked about spiders, mojaves and pastels but what about butters, in one year from $25,000 to $4000. Or pinstripes from $8000 to $2500 in a year. Lesser Platunums from $15,000 to $1500 in a year. It is just the market correcting itself to handle the overproduction of the easily reproduced dominant morphs.

Simple solutions, 3 of them. 1) breed the dominant cheap morph to a recessive morph, increase the value of your production and give yourself a new project to work on without a new investment. Same is true with the dominants, even if you spent $3000 on a spider and $1000 on a pastel and bred them and produced bumble bees you would be ahead of your investment regardless of the market. As the double dominant morph will take longer to level as more is involved in producing it. But have some recessive animals! Nobody with hypos, pieds, clowns, caramels, etc., is complaining about the price dropping on those animals as it does so very gradually. Even albinos that were selling for $1700-2000 2 years ago are still at $1300-1500 today. No pain there.

2) do what some here have suggested, shoot for producing top end of the low morph in quality and market your animals as such.

3) hold back female morphs instead of selling them cheap and use them to internally increase the values of your collection and your production by allowing you to produce super pastels, bumble bees, etc., super pastels will always be a great animal for breeding in the industry. Why wouldn't you want to plug a super into a recessive morph to get all pastels het for ????, or to use to breed to another dominant to dramatically increase your odds on hitting the combo morphs.

Keep in mind also that as more and more breeders up the value of their collections and no longer have pastels, spiders or any base dominants as they replace them with double, triple and quadruple combo animals, the number of those base morphs will dry up and you will see some price increases.

Personally, I am very happy with the idea of pastels getting into the pet trade and think when albinos, spiders and pieds get down to prices where they can be retailed it will open up a whole new sector of keepers and breeders who can't afford the high stakes big money world of ball pythons. You tell me how many people would buy a pied at a pet shop for $500 when they see one? Also don't forget that pastels sold by pet shops will mostly end up as pets and likely not get bred and that is also good for the long term health of the market.

That said, Mark, I have a great animal ready to go for you whenever you are ready. Jen, I have males that are so much better looking than the ones you have looked at online but I am not much of a photographer. I think we should get one out to you so you can be thrilled about it. Evan

 

[markface]

Evan , i agree 100 percent with what you posted . i'm so glad i'm not in this for the money . for me its a hobby i love and the only reason i'm going to be breeding is because i see it as a natural progression in enjoying my critters . yeah it will be cool to sell some babies , but i dont really care if they sell for 2000 bucks or 20 bucks . i doubt i will ever have more than a half dozen breeding females any time in the near future and thats with the ball pythons and the boas i plan on breeding eventually . i'm not worried about finding people to buy my critters either . i work at a very large privately owned exotic petshop part time and i can always wholesale the babies to them . i wont make as much off them that way as i could selling them out right , but who cares . the petshop will definately sell them at premium prices and , will most likely sell them to people who have no intrest in breeding but just want to have a really cool critter to raise up . i couldnt care less about what the market is doing or how much my critters have gone down in value . as long as i can afford to keep them healthy and content i'll always have them to enjoy . for me , that worth way more than any amount of money i might be able to make off them .

evan , i should have the last payment in the mail within the next week to week and a half :scatter: i cant wait to get the little critter home .

 

[Dragon king 24-7]

Where on earth are people selling Spiders n Mojos for over $1500?
I live in Cali n a Spider or Mojo females don't go over $200!
I agree that people selling below market prices are hungry parasites
That do not know what they are doing! Like a crackhead will settle for $50
for a xpnsive rolex just to get the little petty cash they can!

 

[hhmoore]

Where on earth are people selling Spiders n Mojos for over $1500?
I live in Cali n a Spider or Mojo females don't go over $200!
I agree that people selling below market prices are hungry parasites
That do not know what they are doing! Like a crackhead will settle for $50
for a xpnsive rolex just to get the little petty cash they can!

Just a hint - when you jump into a thread that has been dormant for 7.5 yrs, any pre-existing discussion of prices will be seriously outdated.

 

[Robert Walker]

Too funny

 

[Focal]

Ahh, this made my night

I think bumping this thread was a great idea and hopefully reduces more threads of this nature being created.