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Most valuable corn
- Thread starter Neil
- Start date
kenalotia
New member
Based on the prices at Serpenco, I'd say that Butter Stripe and Lavender Motley are currently the most valuable morphs... both are priced at $1000 and are sold out. (I'm not even sure if Rich was actually selling any of them.) When there are more of these morphs around, the price should go down.
Simon
Corn Manic
I'd say that all the corn snakes that are out there are the most valueable.....
I wouldn't like to weight them by prices to say which ones are the most valuable......
but if you are talking about price then yes the Butter Stripes and the Lavender Motley's has the highest prices...
I wouldn't like to weight them by prices to say which ones are the most valuable......
but if you are talking about price then yes the Butter Stripes and the Lavender Motley's has the highest prices...
Tenacious_Ash
New member
CRAZY!
why a $1000?!! are they that rare? i mean a normal corn snake at coast to coast is 30. but 750 pounds would be ****ty!
why a $1000?!! are they that rare? i mean a normal corn snake at coast to coast is 30. but 750 pounds would be ****ty!
HomeBreeder
Herphilious Lunacious
TA,
I know you're new around here, so I'm going to go easy on you. (hehe, j/k.) Seriously though, careful saying things like that where people like Rich can hear you! rofl.
There was a thread last month that went into detail about "creating lavender motley" corn snakes....
the "who want's to be strangled?" thread!
I know you're new around here, so I'm going to go easy on you. (hehe, j/k.) Seriously though, careful saying things like that where people like Rich can hear you! rofl.
There was a thread last month that went into detail about "creating lavender motley" corn snakes....
the "who want's to be strangled?" thread!
Tenacious_Ash
New member
actually seeing it, it is a beautiful snake, i didn't mean to offend Rich, but that is pretty pricey for a snake, u gotta admit.
if i were a millionaire, i would buy some off him, because they are pretty, but i would rather have a normal Corn than a lavender.
if i were a millionaire, i would buy some off him, because they are pretty, but i would rather have a normal Corn than a lavender.
HomeBreeder
Herphilious Lunacious
warning - yet another un-proof-read post follows:
$1000.00 pricey? Not compared to "designer" ball python morphs. Ever thought you'd hear of a $25,000 snake that's not even a proven breeder?
I'm not saying it's impossible to quantify the actual "cost" to Rich, Kathy, or anyone else of producing commercial quantities of of a new morph (i.e. lavender motley) but I will bet nobody would ever bother because the "price structure" for such animals is more the result of market forces than production costs. Corn snakes are not exactly disposable comodities, after all.
That being said, what then DOES come into play pricing a new morph?
If it takes Rich 8 years to get to the point where he can reliably expect to produce 40 or more lavender motleys per year, what did it "cost" him to prepare the "production side" of the model? I'd hate to try to measure that...
Well, then - let's "reverse engineer" a price, since we'd get a migraine calculating our R and D costs and depriciation schedules and all that other junk. If we unload 40 baby lavender motleys per year, then within 2-3 years (it stands to reason) LOTS of other people will be producing them too.. in ever greater quantities.
If we think we're going to recoup RnD from a new morph in 2-3 years, we're off our rocker. Corns are so low-margin it could take a decade or more to recoup RnD like that.
Well, what else? Maybe we can artifically depriciate our RnD costs by releasing very small numbers at first, at relatively high prices?
I think that is the basic mechanical function of pricing "new" herps... look at it this way:
You can bet Rich didn't put that $1000.00 price tag on his website thinking, "I'm going to Disneyland!!!!!". He doesn't expect the public to come beating down his door for lavender motleys. BUT, you know what? There's also a reason it says SOLD OUT - because in fact THE PUBLIC WOULD COME BEATING DOWN HIS DOOR TRYING TO GET THEM!
Heck, he says he isn't selling and he still get's pestered to sell. While most people with a cornsnake for a pet would NEVER consider paying $1000.00 for a cornsnake (not to mention $500, or $250) there are still in fact plenty of people who like (for any number of reasons) breeding "cutting edge" herps.
What this all means, is that while I don't think Rich has calculated what the profit-margin is on any single snake he sells, he's found (through his years of experience selling corn snakes) the "high water mark"; the point at which people who are very serious will buy the very limited number he releases.
Not only does it let him recoup a very small portion of his RnD for those few he sells, he also has somewhat of a "throttle" on the production. This means that the price won't drop to under $300 in 4 years - again, protecting his investment of time and money into the project.
Is $1000.00 a lot for a snake? absolutely. Look at how much people will pay for a purebred cat, dog, or horse though, and those aren't even rare! That's the funny thing about money too though - while $1000 is a lot to one, it's chump-change to an other.
I only have an inkling of what Rich has put into his corn snakes. One thing I do know, however, is that if he asks for $x for a snake, it's a "fair" price, considering it's a luxury item, and not a comodity. Heck, $1000 could be under-priced for all I know. Remember that for Rich and most herp breeders it's not about the money - it's about the animals. The ones I know and respect take their reward in knowing what they are doing for both herps and humanity, not in dollars.
^CB
$1000.00 pricey? Not compared to "designer" ball python morphs. Ever thought you'd hear of a $25,000 snake that's not even a proven breeder?
I'm not saying it's impossible to quantify the actual "cost" to Rich, Kathy, or anyone else of producing commercial quantities of of a new morph (i.e. lavender motley) but I will bet nobody would ever bother because the "price structure" for such animals is more the result of market forces than production costs. Corn snakes are not exactly disposable comodities, after all.
That being said, what then DOES come into play pricing a new morph?
If it takes Rich 8 years to get to the point where he can reliably expect to produce 40 or more lavender motleys per year, what did it "cost" him to prepare the "production side" of the model? I'd hate to try to measure that...
Well, then - let's "reverse engineer" a price, since we'd get a migraine calculating our R and D costs and depriciation schedules and all that other junk. If we unload 40 baby lavender motleys per year, then within 2-3 years (it stands to reason) LOTS of other people will be producing them too.. in ever greater quantities.
If we think we're going to recoup RnD from a new morph in 2-3 years, we're off our rocker. Corns are so low-margin it could take a decade or more to recoup RnD like that.
Well, what else? Maybe we can artifically depriciate our RnD costs by releasing very small numbers at first, at relatively high prices?
I think that is the basic mechanical function of pricing "new" herps... look at it this way:
You can bet Rich didn't put that $1000.00 price tag on his website thinking, "I'm going to Disneyland!!!!!". He doesn't expect the public to come beating down his door for lavender motleys. BUT, you know what? There's also a reason it says SOLD OUT - because in fact THE PUBLIC WOULD COME BEATING DOWN HIS DOOR TRYING TO GET THEM!
Heck, he says he isn't selling and he still get's pestered to sell. While most people with a cornsnake for a pet would NEVER consider paying $1000.00 for a cornsnake (not to mention $500, or $250) there are still in fact plenty of people who like (for any number of reasons) breeding "cutting edge" herps.
What this all means, is that while I don't think Rich has calculated what the profit-margin is on any single snake he sells, he's found (through his years of experience selling corn snakes) the "high water mark"; the point at which people who are very serious will buy the very limited number he releases.
Not only does it let him recoup a very small portion of his RnD for those few he sells, he also has somewhat of a "throttle" on the production. This means that the price won't drop to under $300 in 4 years - again, protecting his investment of time and money into the project.
Is $1000.00 a lot for a snake? absolutely. Look at how much people will pay for a purebred cat, dog, or horse though, and those aren't even rare! That's the funny thing about money too though - while $1000 is a lot to one, it's chump-change to an other.
I only have an inkling of what Rich has put into his corn snakes. One thing I do know, however, is that if he asks for $x for a snake, it's a "fair" price, considering it's a luxury item, and not a comodity. Heck, $1000 could be under-priced for all I know. Remember that for Rich and most herp breeders it's not about the money - it's about the animals. The ones I know and respect take their reward in knowing what they are doing for both herps and humanity, not in dollars.
^CB
Tenacious_Ash
New member
that was very well said. it is a shame that people see such beautiful creatures as luxury items. it makes you feel very annoyed 
Just for the record......
Last year in the old message board here, the discussion came up about the Lavender Motleys. Maybe I posted a photo, I can't remember. Anyway I mentioned that I was toying with the possibility of perhaps selling a single pair of them, but I wasn't really very serious about it. So someone pinned me to the mat and asked what I would charge for that pair. Well, I really wasn't all that crazy about selling any of them yet, as I am only now seeing how the adults will be turning out and it wouldn't hurt me at all to keep every last one of them. So I actually thought offering them for $1,000 each would gently blow the guy off. I really wasn't prepared when the email came back saying "SOLD!"
Not only that, but I have two other people waiting in line in case number 1 on the list backed out.
Lavender Motleys aren't all that hard to produce since they are only double homozygous animals. Butter Stripes, on the other hand, are triple homozygous cultivars. Which means the odds of getting them are less, and I have to have a larger colony of breeding adults to give myself a fighting chance of producing them. And yes, I may offer a pair or two of them for sale next season, but the price reflects the fact that I really don't care if anyone wants to spend that much for them or not. I am perfectly happy keeping another year's production all to myself without shedding a tear over it.
Anyone of you out there can make your own Butter Stripes by simply breeding a Butter to a Stripe, raising up the babies, and growing them up and breeding them. Bear in mind the 1 in 64 statistic and hope you have some luck on hand. And let's assume you would like to hatch out a pair of them. Hmm, that's 128 of them you need to hatch out to have the odds looking fair for you. But beware Lady Luck is all I will say on this matter..........
And also, just for the record, I do not check out other peoples' price lists when I price my own animals. Their prices are irrelevant to me. I charge what I believe is fair and reasonable. Some of my prices are lower than others, whereas others may be higher. I raised my prices for normal corns to $20 because that is what it is worth to put one in a deli cup, feed it, sex it, and label it prior to sale. Otherwise I would just as soon throw every one of them in a bag and sell them to the wholesalers, saving that spot for a Butter Motley, Butter Stripe, or Lavender Motley instead.
Last year in the old message board here, the discussion came up about the Lavender Motleys. Maybe I posted a photo, I can't remember. Anyway I mentioned that I was toying with the possibility of perhaps selling a single pair of them, but I wasn't really very serious about it. So someone pinned me to the mat and asked what I would charge for that pair. Well, I really wasn't all that crazy about selling any of them yet, as I am only now seeing how the adults will be turning out and it wouldn't hurt me at all to keep every last one of them. So I actually thought offering them for $1,000 each would gently blow the guy off. I really wasn't prepared when the email came back saying "SOLD!"
Not only that, but I have two other people waiting in line in case number 1 on the list backed out.
Lavender Motleys aren't all that hard to produce since they are only double homozygous animals. Butter Stripes, on the other hand, are triple homozygous cultivars. Which means the odds of getting them are less, and I have to have a larger colony of breeding adults to give myself a fighting chance of producing them. And yes, I may offer a pair or two of them for sale next season, but the price reflects the fact that I really don't care if anyone wants to spend that much for them or not. I am perfectly happy keeping another year's production all to myself without shedding a tear over it.
Anyone of you out there can make your own Butter Stripes by simply breeding a Butter to a Stripe, raising up the babies, and growing them up and breeding them. Bear in mind the 1 in 64 statistic and hope you have some luck on hand. And let's assume you would like to hatch out a pair of them. Hmm, that's 128 of them you need to hatch out to have the odds looking fair for you. But beware Lady Luck is all I will say on this matter..........
And also, just for the record, I do not check out other peoples' price lists when I price my own animals. Their prices are irrelevant to me. I charge what I believe is fair and reasonable. Some of my prices are lower than others, whereas others may be higher. I raised my prices for normal corns to $20 because that is what it is worth to put one in a deli cup, feed it, sex it, and label it prior to sale. Otherwise I would just as soon throw every one of them in a bag and sell them to the wholesalers, saving that spot for a Butter Motley, Butter Stripe, or Lavender Motley instead.
Tenacious_Ash
New member
it is good that you aren't just selling them for money. but if you don't want to sell your lavenders to that man, DON'T! they are your snakes after all!
Darin Chappell
Very Senior Hillbilly
Although it was touched briefly in Curtis' posting above, there is one thing to heavily consider about why it is that Rich needs to price his highest end animals as he does. Competition from his own customers!
Let's say I buy a 1.1 butter stripe pair from him at $2000. Yep, that's a steep price, but in three years, I should have a clutch of . . .let's say six hatchlings that are sellable. At $750 each, I can more than double my money AND undercut Rich in the process. The following year, I can sell my animals for that same exorbitant (sp?) price, or nearly so, and my female will likely have ten or more viable babies.
You see, if I am the very first one to get my newly designed Serpenco corns from Rich, then not only am I able to sell them at a price that need only compete with Rich, but I am also at least one year ahead of everyone else who did not buy that first offered pair. However, even if I was late in the game, and I bought an adult pair of butter stripes from a second generation breeder for $2000, I only need one clutch of ten, selling the babies at $200 each to break even, and butter stripes will be selling at that range for some time, I would think.
Of course, you can plug in any new, wildly desired morph into the formula, and it will come out the same. So, Rich HAS to charge as much as he does in order to get his profitability margin in before his own customers force his prices down to compete with theirs as the market shifts to bear the new influx of his previously rare morphs.
The good news for Rich is that he always seems to have another new sceeming morph to show us. The good news for me is that I'm ready to snatch them up as they come out!
Let's say I buy a 1.1 butter stripe pair from him at $2000. Yep, that's a steep price, but in three years, I should have a clutch of . . .let's say six hatchlings that are sellable. At $750 each, I can more than double my money AND undercut Rich in the process. The following year, I can sell my animals for that same exorbitant (sp?) price, or nearly so, and my female will likely have ten or more viable babies.
You see, if I am the very first one to get my newly designed Serpenco corns from Rich, then not only am I able to sell them at a price that need only compete with Rich, but I am also at least one year ahead of everyone else who did not buy that first offered pair. However, even if I was late in the game, and I bought an adult pair of butter stripes from a second generation breeder for $2000, I only need one clutch of ten, selling the babies at $200 each to break even, and butter stripes will be selling at that range for some time, I would think.
Of course, you can plug in any new, wildly desired morph into the formula, and it will come out the same. So, Rich HAS to charge as much as he does in order to get his profitability margin in before his own customers force his prices down to compete with theirs as the market shifts to bear the new influx of his previously rare morphs.
The good news for Rich is that he always seems to have another new sceeming morph to show us. The good news for me is that I'm ready to snatch them up as they come out!
I would suggest that you not lower your price to compete with me at all. After all, I promise with every new cultivar that I sell that I will not be the first one to lower prices on them. So as long as YOU don't lower the price, the sale price will remain high and your profit margin will be correspondingly high as well. I don't try to flood the market with something new, so you would have plenty of time to make it well worth your while to be smart about your marketing.
Of course, other people are certainly working on producing Butter Stripes and Lavender Motleys as well, so it's a moot point about holding the price high. But on something completely new that I sell that no one is likely to be able to reproduce in the near term, there is really no reason to cut prices very quickly.
I would have held the Butter corns at $300 for quite a bit longer except someone attempted to torpedo me with prices at one of the Orlando Expos. Next year I came back with LOTS of Butters and slam dunked him right back.
Of course, other people are certainly working on producing Butter Stripes and Lavender Motleys as well, so it's a moot point about holding the price high. But on something completely new that I sell that no one is likely to be able to reproduce in the near term, there is really no reason to cut prices very quickly.
I would have held the Butter corns at $300 for quite a bit longer except someone attempted to torpedo me with prices at one of the Orlando Expos. Next year I came back with LOTS of Butters and slam dunked him right back.
HomeBreeder
Herphilious Lunacious
the conundrum?
Rich, don't take this the wrong way; I have enough respect for you that if I thought you were doing something "wrong" I'd just come right out and say so - I wouldn't beat around the bush. How do you think this sounds as the "price drop theory" (if we rule out coy competitors firing torpedeos, anyway)....
This summer I got (among others) a few of your 2001 leftovers that were your very last 2001 female butter motley and a couple of the last caramel motley males. I also acquired a Don Soderberg male triple het for butter motley. In a couple years I might get some offspring from that female. While I don't think I'd be asking any more for a butter motley than you, there are a number of reasons people should expect me to ask less for the "same" snake:
With one butter motley female and a triple het male, it's going to be probable that anyone calling up and saying they want 1.1 or 2.2 butter motleys would clean me out of that cultivar that season (if I were even that rediculously lucky). I won't have the "selection" that the Big5 have, I won't be able to replace snakes with the same morph (or even sex) much of the time... Not to mention I have yet to build a reputation of any kind, let along for selling pure and healthy corn snakes!
Based on what you say, I will posetively ask for no less than you do when I get my offspring, but I'm not going to be holding my breathe either... I think the consumers expect to pay a premium to buy from you or Kathy, et. al.
^Curtis
Rich, don't take this the wrong way; I have enough respect for you that if I thought you were doing something "wrong" I'd just come right out and say so - I wouldn't beat around the bush. How do you think this sounds as the "price drop theory" (if we rule out coy competitors firing torpedeos, anyway)....
This summer I got (among others) a few of your 2001 leftovers that were your very last 2001 female butter motley and a couple of the last caramel motley males. I also acquired a Don Soderberg male triple het for butter motley. In a couple years I might get some offspring from that female. While I don't think I'd be asking any more for a butter motley than you, there are a number of reasons people should expect me to ask less for the "same" snake:
With one butter motley female and a triple het male, it's going to be probable that anyone calling up and saying they want 1.1 or 2.2 butter motleys would clean me out of that cultivar that season (if I were even that rediculously lucky). I won't have the "selection" that the Big5 have, I won't be able to replace snakes with the same morph (or even sex) much of the time... Not to mention I have yet to build a reputation of any kind, let along for selling pure and healthy corn snakes!
Based on what you say, I will posetively ask for no less than you do when I get my offspring, but I'm not going to be holding my breathe either... I think the consumers expect to pay a premium to buy from you or Kathy, et. al.
^Curtis
Darin Chappell
Very Senior Hillbilly
Let me clarify a few things here:
First, I was in no way saying that I was going to undercut Rich's prices. I was simply using myself as an example of what others can do and often are found doing, which is why Rich's prices are, in my estimation, justifiably higher than some think is acceptable.
Second, I also agree with Curtis that there are reasons why someone starting out would feel the need to undercut Rich by a bit. Until a person is known for fair trades of high quality animals, there are precious few people who are willing to turn loose of their hard earned money for him when they could just as easily go to Rich, Don, Kathy, Jim Stepflug, or others. So, in order to overcome that buyer shyness, many less established sellers go the way of price reduction to overcome the lack of reputation as a "big breeder."
Third, the numbers I was using were COMPLETELY arbitrary and were used just to show the manner in which someone could paye the prices Rich asks, accept the need for a price reduction in their F1 and F2 generations' sales, and STILL make quite a bit of money out of the bargain. I was most definitely NOT saying that if Rich were selling his butter stripes for $1,000 that I would be selling mine at $750.
Maybe $999.95?
First, I was in no way saying that I was going to undercut Rich's prices. I was simply using myself as an example of what others can do and often are found doing, which is why Rich's prices are, in my estimation, justifiably higher than some think is acceptable.
Second, I also agree with Curtis that there are reasons why someone starting out would feel the need to undercut Rich by a bit. Until a person is known for fair trades of high quality animals, there are precious few people who are willing to turn loose of their hard earned money for him when they could just as easily go to Rich, Don, Kathy, Jim Stepflug, or others. So, in order to overcome that buyer shyness, many less established sellers go the way of price reduction to overcome the lack of reputation as a "big breeder."
Third, the numbers I was using were COMPLETELY arbitrary and were used just to show the manner in which someone could paye the prices Rich asks, accept the need for a price reduction in their F1 and F2 generations' sales, and STILL make quite a bit of money out of the bargain. I was most definitely NOT saying that if Rich were selling his butter stripes for $1,000 that I would be selling mine at $750.
Maybe $999.95?