morphs

[tai_pan1]

very well said!

[Tim_Cranwill]

Yes! Well said indeed! Now maybe this thread/pitiful argument can be laid to rest.

[eyespy]

Zhakrin, your 2 cents are worth several dollars at least!! Well said.

[P.curtus]

"last point (for tonight) bob clarke paid $150000 for a leaucistic ball python. y? bragging rights? perhaps we should be looking at why ppl want these mutants.
have fun!
paul"

First off, I'm 99% sure that Bob Clark does not own a leusistic ball python, I believe you're confusing him with Pete Kahl. Second, for you to suggest that either of these two guys paid 150 grand for a snake for bragging rights is stupidest thing I've ever read. It's business. They breed snakes and sell them, maybe you've heard of this strange phenomenon.

[Jeff_Favelle]

Yeah, and its not like Pete has even really posted any pics of it either. He's keeping it quite hush hush. I don't think he had any intentions of bragging at all. He hardly ever posts, yet sells more piebalds than anyone every year.

[Big Mike]

I agree with P.curtus...they are $16,000 because they are an investment and someone could buy them and breed them. Then sell them for what ever price they can get.

I like to look at some of these morphs and I would buy an albino ball if it were cheep. I'd want it for a pet, not an investment so why should I have to pay $2000.

I think that some people set the price of their morphs at a level where only other high end morphers will buy them. This allows them to keep track of where there morph line goes. How many times have you read "_______ from the _______ line"? Big deal. If they were cheeper, then everyone would buy them and breed them and put the high end morpher out of bussiness. I understand wanting to keep your bussiness but you are also on the top of a pyramid and people on the bottom will not be happy.

Remember in the late 80's - early 90's...sports card shops were on every corner. Where are they now? The morph market will crash sooner or later. I'll just wait for my <$200 albino ball to come around.

[Zhakrin]

Sorry big Mike,

A $200 dollar ball python will not be happening any time soon, if ever.

One of the main reasons BP morphs are so expensive is because unlike the Burmese, who lay 60-80 eags/clutch, the BP only produces 4-10. This keeps the supply low and the prices high.

also in general BPs are in a lot more high demand that the huge burmese.

[Big Mike]

I get your point, but are you getting mine?

It may not happen soon, but I think the price will drop by 75% in the next 4-6 years.

Yes balls do have much smaller clutches than burms, but how many people have the resources to breed burms? Not many compared to how many 12 year old kids could breed Balls.

That high demand you speak of is what's going to raise the number of breeders to the point to where the price has to drop. Simple economics.

[P.curtus]

I personally don't see abinos or any other bp morphs dropping below the area of 750$, due to their small cluthc size. Simply because of the expense involved in large scale breeding projects.

Just imagine you have a ball python that lays 4 eggs a year, if you're getting $200 each its not enough you'll spend more than that feeding and heating not to mention the time involved. This is why you don't see cb normals.

[Quervo]

Holy Crap !!!! This thread exploded.

I missed a chance to rant .. Oh no.

Okay .. good points were made by all, but here's my input.

Jeff .. buddy ... chill. I have to disagree somewhat with your $20 gecko analogy. People don't rate their pets worth by its price .... hmmm .. no, let me rephrase that. People SHOULDN'T equate a pets worth by its price. What is missing in this whole equation is education. The more we can educate people about these animals, the more people will respect them (well, I can dream).
Oh .. and your $30,000 house .. its called a mobile home .. or a floating home .. take your pick. .. I think whoever originally posted that was using that wonderful ranting tool called exaggeration.

As to the morph thing .. I tend to agree with Linds .. but only because I look at what has happened with the other animals we have "played" with .. I keep seeing the sphinx cat .. morphing gets carried to a (in my opinion) criminal level. People don't know where to draw the line, and I would hate to see that happen to a reptile.

Think of the snakes .. for gods sake, won't someone think of the snakes.
Oh .. sorry, slipped into movie trivia there.

So there .. a good rant was had by all.

[Jeff_Favelle]

Well, we can say that people should do this and people shouldn't do that until we're blue in the face, but will it matter? It may. Educating (however THAT can be accomplished) may help. Or will it? Sure it'll help the people that genuinely care for living creatures, and that's great. But there's a wealth of information out there now inundating people's brains, yet abuse still happens. Why is that? Could disposable animals have anything to do with it? Umm...probably. Do you think that at any given expo, 2,000 kids would walk home with a corn snake if they cost $500? I doubt it. Do you think that millions of red-eared sliders would have perished in the 80's if everyone had to pay $200 for them? I doubt it. What about all those poor green iguannas? I still don't see how you can eliminate price from how ignorant people acquire and care for their animals. Maybe my brain is too tiny to comprehend that notion. Please explain.

However, there does have to be a reptile available for everyone, doesn't there? I mean, there's no reason that someone shouldn't completely own another living thing's existence just because they don't have the moolah right? Hmmm...that's a toughie. I'm stumped, but does that even matter? I mean, just because I don't like something, doesn't mean its going to change, or that its even bad in the first place! I just wish that people treated stuff the way they want to be treated themselves.

Wow, this thread sure got hijacked eh? Sorry Paul! Maybe we should move this thread (if people still even WANT to talk about it)?


I don't understand why I have to chill? I'm not yelling or swearing? Is it because my replies are more than a sentence? Is it because they are thought-out and coherent (ha ha, JK)? Fine, I'll go back to aloof, 1-sentence replies where no one gains any insight.

OK, now about the price of Ball Pythons dropping in the near future. Umm....not going to happen. The herp crash already happened in the mid 90's and we're not going to experience another for a while. It crashed because people over bred everything and then there was nothing new. Well, now we have morphs and some of the combos aren't even going to be realized for another 20 years!! No herp crash, trust me. Hockey cards? Yeah. Can't compare. You see, Opee chee (sp?) could produce as many cards as they wanted to, but breeders can only produce as many snakes as the snakes themselves want to. Its the only industry where one is not worried about selling and only worried about producing. Most industries, you produce a product and that's the easy part. The hard part is to sell your product. Not really the case with reptiles. Right?

Ok, anything else? This is my last good reply (opinion, ha ha), and then its back to my usual drivel.....

[nyx]

Read through the thread, and now I'm curious: Paul, why have you set yourself up as the judge of beauty? Surely you see that price, like everything else, is relative; my coworkers thought I was insane for spending $400 on a pair of snakes, and I thought they were insane for spending $10,000 to rebuild a classic car. It's the value it has to the hobbyist, and that is entirely personal. And as long as hobbyists are willing to pay $10,000 for a snake, then that's really their business and nobody else's.
I do understand that you're concerned that purebred wild-types will become extinct via the quick and dirty method of producing offspring - i.e. breeding with another subspecies - but the people who are producing the expensive ball pythons are by and large not creating hybrids in order to fuel the morph trade. They inbreed, they linebreed, they crossbreed with other lines - but it's all the same species. Do I think of these snakes as freaks? No. I don't think of them as defects either - the snakes can see, can eat, can breed, can function normally as snakes need to do. Responsible breeders outcross the line for strength once the trait is firmly established.
As for disposable pets - I would say that it is a cultural failing to consider anything cheap as "disposable", including animals when they don't suit your lifestyle. How many cats end up in shelters because they clawed couches? How many dogs end up in the incinerator because they marked territory out of place? It's not limited to snakes. And the rich don't have much more consideration for an animal than the poor, as a group; you <i>might</i> get some reluctance to toss out a cat that cost $1,000, but somehow, I doubt that - after all, if you can afford one in the first place, you can afford another one, and best to replace the cat than have to replace all that expensive furniture it clawed up.

I don't know if you CAN educate against this mindset. We all subconsciously own it, and it's reinforced by media images every day. It's not a matter of reptiles, or even animals; it's a deep-seated urge for the quick and easy.

Er, back to your regularly scheduled morph-beating.

[Jeff_Favelle]

Yeah, you're completely right nyx! It doesn't matter how much dough someone has, they can still be cruel and neglecting. But would it happen on the scale that its happening now if there were NO $20 animals? But then a lot of great herpers would miss out on owning some animals. Yeah, I guess its just something that's always going to be there.

Great insight into the morph thing. Well-written too. Thanks!

[Big Mike]

I've been thinking about it and maybe the prices of BP morphs (for example) will not come down because of over abundance in the market. Leopard Geckos maybe.

Does anyone think that questionable morphs will hurt the market or help it. For example...pastel balls, is anything with a slight color change considered a morph now? Sure it's proven to be genetic but come on. Sure they look nice, but not as nice as a normal (IMHO) so when people are showing them off...all I see is people looking to show off their investment potential. Look at my big bag of money...(if I can find a sucker to buy it for $5000)

OK, I'm ranting and I apologize.

People will do what they want with their money...I don't have to buy anything I don't want to.

[Jeff_Favelle]

Big Mike,

(man, I'm spending my WHOLE half-day off here!! ha ha).

Yeah, the borderline morphs aren't helping anyone, let alone the industry, but they'll peter out hopefully. I mean, anyone serious about investing huge amounts of dough into a reptile venture is probably going to research things a little bit and be directed towards legit people/morphs. So the people who are mislabelling Balls aren't helping the industry, but they aren't killing it either.

As for pastels, I totally thought that they were a "pseudo-morph" too!!! The ones I saw were just pretty normals and some weren't even pretty!!! But those were early and unproven lines and if you've ever seen one from the 2 "good" lines (Graziani and NERD Lemon) then you would know they are the real deal. If you have to look twice to see if its a pastel, its either from the other 2 ugly lines, or its not a pastel. The real borderline morph is axanthics. I wouldn't touch those things, especially at the price they are at.

As for the prices dropping, Leos will drop every day that the sun comes up. I'm surprised that some are still priced so high. But Balls are here to stay. People are getting out of stocks and investing in Ball Pythons, that's how serious it is!! Returns of 1000% are not uncommon and almost expected! How long would it take a blue-chip stock to return 1000% of the principle? Well, at 20% return (HEFTY return) that would take 50 years!! Yeah. Crazy eh? ok, now I'M ranting, ha ha!! Talk to you later man!