Some color morphs and combo morphs are easier to find and less expensive mostly due to their "precursors" being around longer (the gene has been isolated and identified for a longer time). Also, the more genes involved, the longer it can take to get all of them in homozygous form in the same snake. Most corn snake genes are simple recessives. In order for the particular trait of each gene to be expressed, it must be present in homozygous form...that is, there must be 2 of them...one from each parent. The more commonly found a gene is, the more likely it is to be placed in the gene pool when pairing snakes. To give you an idea of about how long it can take for certain combo morphs to be created, I'll start with the discovery of a brand new imaginary gene I'll call "paisley".
I found a female hatchling corn snake expressing a new look...paisley. First, I have to prove it is genetic. I wait the average 3 years for my paisley snake to grow up and I breed her to a known wild-type male (known to not be carrying any recessive genes at all). The resulting clutch has yielded all normal looking offspring. I keep all 4 pairs as I'm not letting anyone have any yet and wait the 3 long years for them to grow up.
Being smart, while the original pairs are growing up, I breed the original female to a few other males with a mixed variety of genes...a snow the second year and a hypo motley the third, and I keep 3 pairs from each breeding, but sell the rest as wholesale normals as I'm running out of room.
The first group of babies (F1 generation) are ready to be bred now and I pair each F1 female with a brother, but I also breed the original mother to one of her sons. I start smoking again and drinking heavily as I wait for the resulting clutches to be laid and then to finally hatch. The first one to hatch is from the mother X son pairing and I get a lovely clutch of half normals and half paisley! I do a little dance and wait for the other clutches to hatch. They yield 75% normals and 25% paisley, just as I had hoped. I choose my keepers and advertise a limited supply of homozygous paisley, het paisley and possible het paisley offspring, pricing the homozygous paisleys at $1000 each the first year.
The following year, I have some F1 offspring that are het paisley, amel and anery to pair together. I also pair the original female with a bloodred this year (year 7, in case you haven't been keeping track). The resulting F2 generation from the 3 kept females (each laid 15 eggs) yield a nice percentage...5 paisley, 2 amel paisley, 1 anery paisley and 1 snow paisley (the Punnett Square results from a triple heterozygous pair is 9/64 paisley, 3/64 amel paisley, 3/64 anery paisley and 1/64 snow paisley). I keep them all and build a new snake building out back. However, Murphy hits me with his law and the snow paisley and an amel paisley are problem feeders and die, and the remaining 7 are male heavy...only 2 of the paisleys are female. I also lost half the clutch from the paisley X bloodred pairing to mold, but the 3.2 hatchlings are doing well. I've also produced enough paisleys from the het pairs to start selling all of them. The price has remained at $1000 each as I have a large waiting list.
In the 8th year, I paired the F1 het hypo paisley motleys and got some interesting results...one pair was also het for anery so the one ghost paisley possible het motley is kept with the 2 hypo paisleys, the 3 motley paisley and the one hypo paisley motley. It was a good year as I also got 2 snow paisleys, 2 anery paisleys and 3 amel paisleys with a nice sex ratio. Regular paisleys have dropped in price to $800 each, but I sold one amel paisley male for $1200. I've also added some normals het caramel paisley motley to by keeper list.
It's the 9th year now and the F1 paisleys are big enough to breed. I expect quite a few so the price has dropped to $500 each, but the few paisley combos for sale are $1000 each. I can increase the normal combos by breeding the male paisleys with the other morph females in my collection. Unfortunately, some morphs I either only have hatchlings or not at all, such as ashy, lava, and Sunkissed, and I also don't have many color combos with bloodred and stripe. I did breed one paisley female with an amel stripe, so in 3 years, I can breed those normals het amel paisley stripe together and hope for a couple of paisley stripes and maybe just one amel paisley stripe. That would be in the 12th year since I found the original female. I wouldn't have a large variety of amel paisley stripes for sale for at least 3 more years after that, and I doubt the price would go down below $200-300 for them until perhaps 10 more years after that.
Now substitute "caramel" for "paisley" and wait for amel caramel stripes (butter stripes). That's why you haven't seen too many of them and why the price is as high as it is. And there are many, MANY more combos that are just wishful thinking in some breeders' minds as they wait for hatchlings to grow into adults.
