What's with the price crashing?

[WingedWolf]

Oh, I'm all for capitalism, and letting people set their own prices, etc--it's just totally inexplicable to me when people chop their own feet off at the ankle, though. It doesn't make sense to ask a lower price for something than you can get. Past a certain point, it won't even speed sales further (and might even hurt them--those in the know will be leery of prices that are TOO low).

 

[bear]

I think it depends on what animals we are talking about here. Lets say albino boas, they are a staple morph, and their selling price is known and should not be significantly dropped. Harald mentioned above that some boas were 1/3rd the price of last year, but were they new morphs trying to find their price points or staple morphs? Lets take albino motleys and sunglow motleys for example. They are new and breathtaking, everyone wants them so a huge price tag follows, they started at i think $4,500, and within months i see them at $2,500-$3000. Why the drop? because no one will pay that, the value is not there and we all know by the time they are breedable they will be worth a small fraction of that.. Albino motleys started at $1300-1500 and are now at $800 or so and that was all within a year. I fully expect that come 2011 albino mots will be $600-800 and sunglow mots will be 1500-1800 or so. Like it or not people are going to want to sell these things eventually.. BUT I would be VERY disappointed if in 2012 the prices move from there. At that point i believe they will find their price point. I think those prices are fair and reasonable for those morphs and I wouldn't be upset paying that for them. And that is what its all about, finding the sweet spot in pricing where you are getting a fair amount for your animals and your customers dont have buyers remorse the next season.

So my 1 cent opinion sums up to... Finding price points is fine in my book, we are here to sell things not sit on them.. but slashing prices on morphs we all know are worth last years prices should not be slashed just to kick the competition (and yourself) in the groin. SO QUIT DROPPING ALBINO BOAS THEY WERE FINE AT $300 LOL

 

[WingedWolf]

I wonder if part of it is just people being slow to catch on to the way the season starts. They expect their first clutches to fly out the door, but they're not going to.

Remember, the primary buyers of morphs are other breeders. Those breeders are waiting for their own clutches to appear so, they can sell them to get money to buy YOUR clutches.

I think some folks just don't understand this--every season starts out slow, and then peaks, then drops off some and rolls along into the start of the winter breeding season. It's just the start of the season now, but people are dropping prices as if they expected sales to be the way they are at the peak.

 

[bear]

Agreed, In the case of boas i fully expect it to take a full year to sell everything produced, you have to be prepared to house and feed everything you produce. I think Harald mentioned that earlier as well, a lot of these people slashing prices may be doing so because they didnt prepare with proper caging for the long haul..

 

[Gloryhound]

I think it depends on what animals we are talking about here. Lets say albino boas, they are a staple morph, and their selling price is known and should not be significantly dropped. Harald mentioned above that some boas were 1/3rd the price of last year, but were they new morphs trying to find their price points or staple morphs? Lets take albino motleys and sunglow motleys for example. They are new and breathtaking, everyone wants them so a huge price tag follows, they started at i think $4,500, and within months i see them at $2,500-$3000. Why the drop? because no one will pay that, the value is not there and we all know by the time they are breedable they will be worth a small fraction of that.. Albino motleys started at $1300-1500 and are now at $800 or so and that was all within a year. I fully expect that come 2011 albino mots will be $600-800 and sunglow mots will be 1500-1800 or so. Like it or not people are going to want to sell these things eventually.. BUT I would be VERY disappointed if in 2012 the prices move from there. At that point i believe they will find their price point. I think those prices are fair and reasonable for those morphs and I wouldn't be upset paying that for them. And that is what its all about, finding the sweet spot in pricing where you are getting a fair amount for your animals and your customers dont have buyers remorse the next season.

I wonder also if some price drops are due to the latest and greatest mentality everyone has, particularly with ball pythons. A lot of breeders and collectors want to work with the latest and greatest gene to hit the market. Breeders think they need the latest and greatest to make their mark, so they think they need to sell off everything quick so they can buy the new gene and make their mark. Granted little do they realize they are setting up the fall of that new morph they forked out big dollars for. I also sometimes wonder if the over abundance of morphs is more of a hinderence to holding prices than a true help. Corns have tons of morphs and I just can't seem to get myself wrapped around them (granted I really have not tried). Could excessive choice be the fall of other animals as well?

 

[bear]

I fully expect that come 2011 albino mots will be $600-800 and sunglow mots will be 1500-1800 or so. Like it or not people are going to want to sell these things eventually.. BUT I would be VERY disappointed if in 2012 the prices move from there. At that point i believe they will find their price point. I think those prices are fair and reasonable for those morphs and I wouldn't be upset paying that for them. And that is what its all about, finding the sweet spot in pricing where you are getting a fair amount for your animals and your customers dont have buyers remorse the next season.

Actually i just saw sunglow motleys at $2000 shipped from shane kinney.. those mot morphs might reach that price point before next season..

 

[paulWTAMU]

I think I've seen this discussion annually since maybe 2005?
Some animals crash and burn in price (albino retics from 2000 to now..woah!). Some hold their value better--albino balls are still 400-600 bucks and they've been around since what, the mid 90s?
Some species seem more prone to rapid fluctuations. Species with tons of morphs (balls, corns) and species with very limited markets (hots, giants) seem to have that happen to them.

It makes sense though...there's only so many people out there that want a purple tiger retic or an albino cobra. And with balls and corns and leopard geckos...how many morphs are out there now? There's an overwhelming number and I suspect they're eating into each other's market--i.e. a guy wants to get 2 or 3 morph ball pythons, and instead of having 3-5 morphs to choose from he's got 50!

What puzzles me is that locality markets seem to be more stable over the long run than morph markets. Of course they don't usually start out hyper-expensive either so they've got less far to fall.

 

[WingedWolf]

I'm not talking about the natural declines in market prices--I'm talking about the few odd individuals who dramatically underprice.

 

[kmrkvicka]

Donna, I also want to point out that the true enthusiasts will always still pay for quality. Like the pied I will be buying from you. At a show I went to in February, I found some female pieds for several hundreds of dollars left, that were not of the same quality as the girl I'm getting from you, and did not "speak" to me the way yours did. Same with many of the boas I've gotten. For the animals of good quality, that I recognize as good quality, I'm personally willing to pay the price difference. Harald put a mojave ball python (08 female) up for sale a while back that I paid for, that many people might have felt was priced a bit high. Let me tell you she is worth every single freaking penny. Quality is ALWAYS worth the extra money. I personally feel that way when I price my animals. The right buyers do come by, and I have no problem housing the animals until that buyer shows up.

We're out there, have faith, k?

 

[WingedWolf]

Thanks, km.

 

[Ramiro]

What a great thread!

I think ANYONE who pays good money for a snake becomes an immediate competitor because now that person will definitely try to breed and make money off of that snake or at least recoup the money that was invested in said snake (probably why there are so many price-crashers selling newborn morphs). By good money I mean a lot more money than a normal snake typically sells for. If you only want your buyers to be buying pets and not breed the snakes, breed inexpensive normals or inexpensive morphs of the popular snakes. I bet most of those sales will truly be just for pet snakes. If you sell morphs and they're worth more than 3X the cost of a normal you're probably selling to a breeder or an aspiring breeder. Only people who have lots of money will buy a morph for good money and just keep it as a pet. Remember that prices reflect demand and every year the numbers of any morph increase exponentially.

 

[JinxtheBP]

But why should the price have to drop... its not like snakes are a staple of life... they are an extra.... you DONT have to have them. So why should the price drop... either you can afford it now.. or you will save up a bit

Sorry, but...that's exactly why the price drops. There's less demand for the snakes in times when people can't afford such luxuries. Because there is less demand, there is often a surplus of supply. Which results in lower prices in order to sell the existing items (or in this case...snakes).

There ya go. Supply and demand in a nutshell, lol.

Not to mention, it's likely a case of lower level breeders selling lower level products to lower level buyers. If you think about it...they're not really your competition. They're in a whole different league. People who are buying at those prices don't care enough about quality to save up to buy from a lot of the great breeders here! And when it really comes down to it...would you want those less-than-knowledgeable, less-than-capable buyers to be buying your animals? I know I wouldn't...

 

[paulWTAMU]

Jinx; I think to some extent the big breeders have pushed some of us to looking to smaller breeders (combined with the weak economy). Take a look at Bob Clark's prices; they haven't budged since 2008, even on single co-dom morphs (spiders, mojaves, tiger retics). And yeah, he's got nice snakes; I have a retic from him that I bought back in 08. Gorgeous animal.

But so do some of the smaller, or just lesser known breeders. So when I want something I look at them. I look for reviews here, I may look for photos of the parents, etc. And I've gotten snakes I'm sure are 100% the quality I'd have gotten from Bob Clark or Mike Wilbanks for less. And I would not have paid what they were charging even if the animals weren't available for less. This includes a pair of tiger albinos (one purple, one lavender).

There's a middle ground between blowing money on a name and buying cheap bottom of the barrel animals; I think given the combination of bad economy and the increasing number of breeders, more people are going to that middle ground.

 

[JinxtheBP]

No offense intended, paul! I think you're right! The economy definitely makes people look at different alternative options. There's definitely a middle ground, but there are also some very reputable breeders selling high quality stuff and some very shady breeders selling poor quality stuff. There can be no light without dark. And as such, there are definitely shades of gray!

Also, I want to bring up that there's definitely a difference between breeders who are responsible, but not as well known...and breeders who are irresponsible or just downright bad! I hope I didn't step on any toes! :O

 

[TripleMoonsExotic]

I always love these discussions...

I honestly think we're just all, collectively, shooting ourselves in the foot. Why can a petstore sell a Normal Ball Python for $100, but we're cutting our throats and selling Pastels (male) for $50-75? We aren't selling wholesale to one another, no bulk quantities here.

By reducing the price of the base morphs, the combos are also dropping. Bees for $400? Blue-Eyed Luecs for $1k?

If I was interested in this as a source of income rather then a self-sustaining hobby I would run screaming in the other direction!

 

[paulWTAMU]

Triplemoon; Petsmart here sells normals for as low as 29.99 on sale, 59.99 regularly (I buy dog food there, what can I say...I always have to look at the herps).

I'd say part of it is that those of us that know enough to go to breeders aren't going to pay petstore prices if we're buying from the breeder...we've removed a middleman after all.
And like I said earlier...BPs may have just hit that point. There's tons of morphs, tons of different combos that are regularly produced, tons of production of each morph...and only so many people want them. I don't care how cheap black pastels or cinnies are, I don't like 'em. Pieds? maybe when they hit down to 300 or so. Spiders? I got one as a pet this year for 150. Demand isn't infinite for these animals so every breeder that produces them is competing for the same market...they can compete on price or quality, or a mix of the two. And given that "quality" can be partially subjective (do you like high or low contrast albinos? high or low white pieds?), and hard to verify for the objective part of it (feeding, healthy, etc) until well after the sale...

It's like corns--cornsnakes haven't been (generally) high dollar animals in a long time. You can buy 2-3 recessive gene animals for dirt cheap. Because they've been bred to hell and back. yeah there's some few morphs that still command high dollar, but most of them? 30-100 bucks.

 

[paulWTAMU]

Shoot wish we could edit in this board :-/
That post mostly focused on balls, but I think it's at least partially the same with boas and other long time "popular" snakes....yeah new people are coming in faster than old people are leaving (I think/hope) but we've still got a limited market.
You don't really hear about price crashing too much in colubrids (at least I haven't and I do more with colubrids than boids). I don't know if it's because they've gotten less exposure, or because their prices just never climbed so high on the whole, so they don't have as far to drop? Or something else? I mean, the bullsnake has tons of morphs...so do fl. kings...some of the combo animals in particular aren't cheap. They may not be 1200+ but they can be mid to high hundreds (hypo WS fl kings are several hundred for instance)...?? I don't know why

 

[TripleMoonsExotic]

Triplemoon; Petsmart here sells normals for as low as 29.99 on sale, 59.99 regularly (I buy dog food there, what can I say...I always have to look at the herps).

I'm not referring to imported animals that come in at $3-5 a head.

Shoot wish we could edit in this board

You can if you are a Contributor.

 

[Kaiyudsai]

and another reason the price is dropping: people are breeding just to breed. They don't care about quality. So they produce cheep low quality animals they figure will move fast. And there right :/

Let's price a lesser that's a low quality (say its the worst in your clutch) $50 or even $100 cheeper then your "hold backs". What do you think will sell faster? Someone just wanting a pretty pet or someone who doesn't care about quality will buy the cheeper one. Causing cheeper quality animals to show up next season.

Amen..... Everybody and their brother has started breeding ball python morphs.... People are cranking out babies like crazy... did ya'll think the price was going to stay high... that is the nature of the morph industry.... You NEVER get what you paid.... that's why I steer clear of it...

I really feel bad for the breeders who have been at it for years... all these overnight ball python bandwagon folks are killing their profits.... but then again... they bought their original stock from someone..

I think the main issue is... if someone spends that kind of money on a snake... it is silly NOT to breed it.... how many people do you know buys a 3000$ snake just to look at....

In the end.... people have the right to sell the snakes they produce for any price they desire... Some of the original prices of some of these morphs is just ridiculous...

 

[JinxtheBP]

BPs may have just hit that point. There's tons of morphs, tons of different combos that are regularly produced, tons of production of each morph...and only so many people want them. I don't care how cheap black pastels or cinnies are, I don't like 'em. Pieds? maybe when they hit down to 300 or so. Spiders? I got one as a pet this year for 150.

I'm totally with you on that. I don't find many of the BP morphs that appealing, simply because they don't look all that different from the normals, to my uneducated eye anyway...I'd kill for a bumblebee, though!