AGH! Investment snakes? Sends shivers down my spine...
There's a lot of money going around in the ball python market today. That has not gone unnoticed. Over the past few years, there has been a lot of talk about "investment" animals and whatnot. I feel like A LOT of people got into the market for the wrong reasons and that is one of the major problems with the market today.
People get in, and realize very quickly that you aren't going to turn your money around in one year. With the cost of feeders every week, caging, supplies, etc, etc, there's a decent amount of overhead that a lot of people don't realize and people have started dumping their projects to pay their bills coming due.
An example of this is with what happened to Mojave's last year. This time last year, Mojaves were selling anywhere from 2000 for males and 3000 for females. This one rimjob from the midwest who produced a lot of them decided that he was going to dump about 50 mojaves on the market for 800 a piece. Guess what the new "market price" on Mojaves was? $800, even though the supply was still relatively the same. One guy affected everyone's perception of their value and they've been 800 ever since.
As a result, people are scared to "invest" any decent sums of money into some ball python morphs for fear that someone is going to dump the market on them and significantly affect their return. Rightfully so! I wouldn't want to spend 2000 on a snake and then have it be valued at 800 less than two weeks later!
Basically, whats going on is that the "easy to produce" stuff is coming down in a price a lot because all those dudes that got into this for $ bought into co-dominant and dominant projects that you can produce lots of with normal females. A lot of those projects are mature now so the supply is huge and competition to sell is so fierce that people are undercutting each other in price left and right. Buyers can now get spiders, pastels, albinos, mojaves, and pinstripes for less than $1000. If you were to try to buy those two years ago, you'd be spending anywhere from 1500-5000 for the same animal.
So to address the question in this thread - recessive (albino, lav albino, pied, etc) and double co-dom (ivory, bumblebees, lucys, etc) are going to hold their value longer simply because they are harder to produce. Even more so are the double recessive animals (lav albino pied, etc) and co-dom x recessive combos (spider pied, etc) which really aren't even available to the public yet.
The fact of the matter here is that as long as ball pythons are in demand, which I feel they will be forever, you will be able to make your money back as long as you spend wisely. It might not be in one year, or two years, but in the long run, you can produce and sell offspring to pay for your hobby - so make sure you are in it for the long haul before you get in. I still have to pay attention to the market because I'm producing snakes and need to know what prices to ask of anyone who want to buy what I make, but generally I try to ignore all the market drama and just focus on what I love - the snakes!
