HRP 221 - Q4 2025 Ball Python and Hognose Stonk Report w/ Aaron

Welcome everybody to episode 221. Remember me, Aaron? The snowflakes falling do not have any fiduciary duty to you. We don't know what we're talking about. Um, do whatever you want.

>> Do the opposite of what we suggest, >> right? Yes. Do, do the opposite. Do whatever is in your heart because [ __ ] it. Why not?

>> Part of this stinks. That'll lead you. Also, as always, um, these numbers do not include for sale function or auctions. So, this is basically the most expensive it could be based on sold comps, not listed sales, but sold comps.

>> Sold comps. I know people struggle with that because they're like, "What do you mean?" It's just sold comps. That's it. It's like, it's like a real estate house. How about that? Who's in chat? Chris, uh, the Harbins, Scales and Scholars, Travis, other Chris, Macamorphs, Quirky.

>> Hell yeah.

>> Thanks for coming. Ready? Let's go.

>> Oh, [ __ ]

>> I've never. This is why I'm doing this live instead of a member live because normally fourth quarters are really bad. Um, but I am just disturbed.

>> Disturbed by this graph.

>> But look how cute that snake is. It's so cute. It's new. The delta between the the summer trough and the winter current peak is 1,873. The trough was 2,321. The peak is 4,194. Technically, every year the peak should come in November and then slide down from there. Uh, unlike every year ever, that did not happen this year. I mean, maybe not ever since it's being recorded, and I find that disturbing.

So,

>> It's an interesting graph.

>> Yes. Normally, colubic graphs are quite flat. Like there's obviously more supply in the summer, less supply in the winter, but the number sort of just going up and up and up is uh not good to me. It just means there's more supply coming on the market. More supply coming on the market even when they're not even being born right now.

>> That's an interesting graph. The way that people buy or talk about hog noses, you would think it would be the inverse.

>> That they buy more in the

>> Or be more flat. At least.

>> It should be more flat. If supply wasn't out exceeding demand, it would be more flat. There'd be just like this, >> right? At the very least, the consistent purchase.

>> Yes. And there are purchases. It's not like nobody's purchasing. It's just right now supply is 100% out shipping demand on average on Morph Market specifically, not at shows. I don't know what's happening at shows. Shows are somewhere else. But right this second, uh, this is why we're doing it live cuz I was like, what the is going on?

>> That's an interesting graph.

>> Yeah. Uh, it is not as high of a number as the ball python number. So, you could argue it's still better. Like, maybe it'll settle out somewhere like 8,000 or 6,000 or whatever you want. And that's sort of like the mean circulating number of hog noses we decide to have on Morph Market collectively. But

>> I don't know.

>> Do you think that's partly to do with hog noses like Morph Market still being predominantly a ball python classified versus hog noses or is hog nose just as popular there? I don't know. I mean, the chat's alluding to it. Uh, people have been investing in hogs for a few years as new investments.

>> True, Lisa. That is a high.

>> Lisa. And those people are maybe the kind of people that were trained to enjoy hognos because of Morph Market. So they're more likely to return to Morph Market to sell.

>> If they've swapped.

>> Well, we do know. We do know some. I know some breeders who have absolutely done that or the very least they've supplemented ball pythons with hog noses. So they're familiar with Morph Market as a whole. Mhm. So that would be their outlet to sell.

>> That would be their first outlet they go to. Yes. Along with if they do shows. Yes.

>> So, it's not a disaster yet, but I. This is highly irregular to have the number continue to go up after Christmas.

>> It's also really high from its previous peak. Like, real high.

>> Yeah. And you can see how it's flat sort of here.

>> Where, where it's where that snake's nose. What time period is that?

>> This is July 1st of 2024.

>> Okay.

>> 25, 26.

>> Okay. So, there's still an increment. Like, it's still rising regardless of what we think. It's still rising.

>> It's still rising and it's still having its seasonal up and down, probably. But I. It's just not normal to have the number go up after Christmas for any category species.

I forgot about that, Lisa. I forgot that they. That Snake Discovery purchased a building just to breed hog noses. Which the funniest thing to me about hog noses is like, I know people have talked about it, been like, "Yeah, I can keep way less snakes and produce way more ball pythons than ever in like a way smaller footprint." And I'm like, "I don't know how that's sustainable." Yeah, I mean, they still can do that, I guess, but I like it's just weird now because there's you go to a show and somebody will fly in and bring in hundreds of hog noses that aren't on Morph Market and that's fine. They don't have to put all their inventory on Morph Market, but like, there's a lot of potential pets out there floating around. Uh, just like with ball pythons, but it's but those people are now being like, "Woopsie, couldn't sell them at all my fall shows. Now I'll stick them on market."

>> I'm curious on how this keeps going. Now, you know, there's pros and cons to this. There's a lot. They're a lot smaller.

>> A lot smaller.

>> Um, but they are legal in some parts of the US.

>> Illegal in some parts of the US.

>> That's a con. Um, very colorful. I don't know. They're very cute on TikTok, so that's a pro.

>> They don't cost as much to feed.

>> That's true.

>> It's better in the economy for the most part for an adult, but like, I still wouldn't sell one to a kid as their first B as their first pet snake.

>> I know people do.

>> Yeah.

>> I just don't like it because they do. They are rear-fanged and they tend. They tend to be very food motivated.

>> Yeah. Did you see that bite on

>> Yeah.

>> Reddit? It was good. It was crazy. All right. Albinos. This is the other thing that made me sad. Last quarter. Okay. Listen to me. Listen in no uncertain terms. Third quarter is supposed to be boring. Like, so boring because it's like the last half of the summer. Prices aren't really supposed to fall for morphs until the fourth quarter. And by third quarter, even hog noses were taking L's. And I was like, what is going on? So like halfway through this year, we hit new L's. Like when we did this live for the ston in the after the second quarter in the spring, I was a little bit positive. Okay, fool me once. Shame on me. Uh, I am not feeling as uh generous about any of this right this second because the third quarter was a terrible and then the fourth quarter followed suit. It didn't like immediately rebound or something.

>> It's a weird drop for for no reason almost like.

>> I think macroeconomic.

>> Problems.

>> Agreed. But also, it feels like people are just. We've talked about this before, that people just don't want to hold on to it anymore.

>> Yeah.

>> Like they're not holding out for the $200 price point. They're going to 150.

>> Yeah. I think that like the new age of young hog noose breeders are hitting the market and being like.

>> They got to go.

>> And maybe they do got to go.

>> But whatever. Uh, exanthic. Very few. Not no plain exanthic sold in the fourth quarter. So.

>> Interesting.

>> Very few of them sell ever anyway. They are usually like head albino or something. So they wouldn't come up.

>> But very few people breed specifically for just exanthic.

>> The graft is kind of wild.

>> It's cuz nobody really care. Like, there's like the end is like one, two.

>> Those animals are being wholesaliled off as normals to pet stores.

>> Yeah. Or taken to shows for cheaper.

>> Yeah. They're just being sold as pets.

>> Snow, which was like a perennial winner for a long time. Like really steady in the.

>> Over 500 camp for a long time.

>> Is it marshmallow snow?

>> Yes.

>> Yeah. Is now falling below 500 for the first time.

>> Marshmallow's not pushing hard, huh?

>> In eight years.

>> Let's go, Marshmallow. Pick it up, buddy.

>> But you can see how like by the third quarter I was like, what the what what? Like it was this. I don't know. I just lost it.

>> It's again, it's a weird like second to third quarter. I don't know. It's a weird drop. Even second quarter. The drop should be in the fourth quarter cuz that's when you have the most supply.

>> Yeah. You also have people with the uh Black Friday sales, right?

>> I just don't know if. Were there that many Black Friday sales?

>> I didn't see as many, but maybe I didn't look for them, but it's possible they just did it.

>> I just think like the hog noose auction problem has gotten worse this year in particular. Like hog noses were pretty good on auction. Like you could put one up and then it would get pretty close to retail on Morph Market. It's.

>> Because the ball python people were jumping in.

>> Right? Well, and now hogs auctions do not get close to retail anymore. Sometimes they do, but like a lot of times you're like, "Oh, what?" Like I saw a moonstone go for. Doesn't matter. Like way less than retail. What's a moonstone?

>> A super arctic lavender.

>> Okay.

>> And then I tried to make a graph for that. There's not enough even retail sales of that to like get a price, retail price, which is starting to be the problem where if everything sells on auction, you can't.

>> Can't stalk.

>> Get a good gauge of like, oh, okay, if this was a thousand bucks, people would buy it for a thousand. I don't even know anymore. For some of these morphs, like they've started to just go to auction only, which is a problem with ball pythons, too. But we'll get there. Lavender also L's third quarter, fourth quarter. It's a big drop from beginning of the year to now. Like first to fourth quarter for like females. It's almost 50%.

>> Yeah.

>> In the same year.

>> Same year.

>> Like, it's not, you know. Yeah. That's a weird one.

>> Yeah. And to be clear, I'm not telling anybody this to make you depressed. Although it may make you depressed because it makes me depressed. I'm telling you this because I think there's things that are outside of hognose breeding that are affecting hognoses. And I think people are exacerbating it by their behavior, which is like, there's no reason the prices should have fallen in the third quarter. You didn't give it enough time to stew online and have people think about it. I think even hogs people are getting impatient. You know, they don't cost that much to feed. It's okay to hold them. But then.

>> But you do have a lot.

>> If you have a lot.

>> Females that are double and triple clutching.

>> You do have a lot.

>> Well, then then on individual basis, but by clutch bases, they're cost more. I guess it depends on the size of clutch. Like a pinky is like 27 cents now or something.

>> Yes, it is relatively really inexpensive, but.

>> And like a hopper mouse is what, 40 cents if you buy it frozen? Like, if you were going to feed baby ball pythons.

>> Yeah.

>> So, they are kind of close together.

>> You have like six of them versus like 12 of the other.

>> Yeah. I just I I mean like the it could just be like we finally hit enough hog noses that hog nose prices have to correct. Like we did it. Congratulations. Yay. So, it's happening and it makes me sad. So, there Arctic. Very few sold as usual. They sell as normals basically.

>> Uh, kind of looks like it's going up. This is like N equals 1, N equals 2.

>> I thought Arctics were very popular. Or is it just the super arctic?

>> Super Arctics used to be pretty popular, but they've been like, they're not as steady as like snows were in terms of like everybody wants a snow.

>> What's a storm cloud?

>> We'll get there. It's an exanthic sable.

>> Oh, the sables. That's right.

>> The reptile community should stop calling gray light snakes lavender.

>> I didn't know that was a thing for lavender hogs. Uh, I like it. I think it's good like PR marketing even though they're not really purple. Uh, I think you need like fun morph names. What do you think of that theory?

>> I think that definitely makes a big appeal for especially starting something out. I I we can go down that rabbit hole another day, but I believe that's caused a lot of turmoil in the ball python market when things have really bad names. Yeah. What about window? The name window.

>> The window clean. That's the full name.

>> Just uh sunburst.

>> These sound really. Speaking of cool names, this sounds cool. I want it.

>> It's a great name for a little morph. It's very evocative. I just. It's kind of like the early here. It didn't h. But then it like elled in the fourth quarter. Uh, that's a weird L to take. 50% drop quarter to quarter for females. Yeah, I this one I think this one was really popular here. A lot of people bought a lot of them and so they're making because there's less combo potential hog noses. You end up like pairing kind of the same things. So, a lot of people have a lot of the same things to sell now. So, here we go. Yippee. Uh.

>> People are making a thousand baby hog noses of all relatively similar morphs. It's all eventually.

>> And like, there's not that many different morphs in hog. There's a lot. There's more than like the average species, but.

>> Right. And more coming out.

>> Yeah. Which is good and strong.

>> My Thai. I don't know why this happens. Like very few sell and they don't appear to be that popular and they are just.

>> I thought my ties were really popular.

>> No, I think.

>> What's a com? What's a mai?

>> A toffee belly sable.

>> Toffee belly sable. Toffee belly needs to just become toffee.

>> Well, I I think some people like colloquially call it toffee.

>> Yeah.

>> Uh, I just I think these are cool. They don't appear to be that popular. A lot of them are het for like other stuff or have RB pastel in it or something. So that's why they don't show up here. And those ones are more expensive. But I don't know. I find that disturbing. Also, coral. It's.

>> Went up. Let's positivity the female.

>> Yeah, a little bit up, but not that many sold. I think it was like three.

>> But it went up.

>> It did go up.

>> Males dropped by a lot for no reason.

>> Right. Like, there's less instances of the same thing in hog noses than there are in ball pythons. So, it's hard. Then storm clouds. No new storm clouds sold, but I don't think this is the price. I've seen them at shows for less than that. I don't know what the market is. A lot of them are selling on auction. Like people are selling storm clouds on auction. So, like.

>> You know, would be an additional, you know, would be a.

>> If you can. I don't know if you can track it. It would be an interesting addition to the stock report of how many of the morphs sold on auctions. Not the prices specifically, but if you're like auction the one that was. I have a picture.

>> Like StormCloud would be very interesting. It's like, well, there's two dozen of them sold on auction and be like, oh, well, that's interesting.

>> Yeah. Like the one. We'll get to sunset, but sunset is one in particular where most sunsets sold in the last quarter were sold on auction, like more than the ones sold regular. Is what does that mean? Does that mean Morph Market wants to be an auction site? Buyers want it to be or sellers are like getting convinced to do it or I don't know. And then and you're like, well, then like basically the ability to to do a good stock report relies on people having some static listings and people will buy off of static listings. So, I don't know why people don't want to do some static sales. But if the Morph Market goes away from that.

>> Um, then I don't know what the price thing is.

>> It it'll be very specific items, right? We talk about this with like live auctions coming and the difference between like eBay and eBay. You said eBay still has static listings in certain categories like uh trading cards. I think the same thing would happen on Morph Market because there's certain species that just kind of would probably sell statically like a static like your Russian rat snake probably could sell static on.

>> Yeah, they did it within 12 hours. So.

>> Right. So, you would just continue doing that. There's no reason to put them on auction.

>> I know. But don't we want ball pythons and hog noose and like morph species to like have a price? We're all like, "Yeah, that's the price." And then if I give you the buddy reach price that's like 20% off that. Don't we want to know?

>> I agree with you.

>> Price.

>> I just think that the market like I just think Morph Market is becoming a predominantly auction site. Now there's a competitor out there called Brads. They should start marketing themselves. Hey, don't worry about auctions. Just come here static list. They want to play dirty. They can do that. Yes, they can do that. Buyers want cheap, sellers need to move animals and drive revenue. Okay. But then like the question is, is do people want to lock in the auction price as the price or do they want to keep like playing these like games? We're like it's actually 1,200 but it's.

>> I really only expect $200 on auction.

>> If people want to keep doing that, that's what they're doing now. We'll see. Well, one interesting thing about that concept is that's very shortsighted for the buyers because most buyers on Morph Market are other breeders. So, if you are artificially buying stuff up cheap, why is someone going to give you a premium price when you got it cheap? But it also doesn't incentivize a buyer to keep a price point on a project high because they got in for let's say 50% at auctions at cheap.

>> They could. They need cheap to get out again, right? Like to get their money back.

>> Right. They're not that worried about maintaining whatever.

>> Yeah. So, maybe they paid for it on a credit card and want to not pay that interest, which I don't blame anyone for certain things. Like, nobody else is paying your bills. So, if you got to sell it for whatever because you got to get money back out and get money in. I I get it, right? Um, but buying cheap isn't always the best idea for the industry we all want to be a part of.

>> Yes. Uh, ball pythons to me, they're doing better than hog noses. Like this graph looks better to me. I know the number is still higher than the hog noose number. The trough was in July at 27,946 and the peak was in November, which is the correct time at 35,310 with a 7,364 snake delta. But I don't like this shape. It's too flat. I find that.

>> It's early. It's early.

>> No, I don't like it. It should be. Look at these shapes. These shapes. They peak and they're like the demand immediately starts to peel off stuff and it slows down over Christmas. No ship. No ship. Christmas. And then it goes down again. This is not a normal shape. I'll be interested to see that shape in February.

>> Yes, me too. I have sold and had a bunch of victories on work market just in the last couple days, week, whatever. People are back on. Maybe they were like, I don't know. I couldn't figure out like an event besides general malaise that would have been like nobody wants to buy anything from November to this time. So, I didn't see that. The other thing we started tracking was store number for ball pythons.

>> Mhm. Store number peaked on in September at 2,376. The store trough happens like right now at 272. Lots of people do turn off their store and listings over the winter because they're like, I don't want to take inquiries if I don't feel like shipping or they're they're in they're whatever having holiday time. So, that makes sense. And if you go back in time, I just don't think there's that many active stores. This is stores with ball python listings that are active. There are more stores that are still on, but none of their ball python listings are active because they're. Oh, the store exists, but they're they turned them all off.

>> Mhm.

>> So, those people are there. What's weird is like this number is not still that big, right? It's not like we gain 3,000 extra people in the summer when people try to sell babies. Most people keep some ball python listings all the time. What do you think about that?

>> That's an interesting one. Essentially, there's 2,000 people that buy ball pythons, buy and sell ball pythons.

>> Yeah, that's not true. That's not accurate. But.

>> Right, there there's people who buy and sell ball pythons that do not have a more market store because they don't want to or they just.

>> They go to sale only.

>> Yes. Yes. But it gives you an insight to how big what the traffic is on Morph Market itself.

>> Because you like you couldn't extrapolate that to say well there's 2 million people a a day on Morph Market right indiv like individuals but you could easily extrapolate that to be like I don't know 10,000 20,000.

>> Right. I bet there's.

>> I still think there's probably like a maybe couple hundred to a thousand people who aren't on market, don't want to be, they just vend their local show, breed two clutches a year, whatever. And they are technically breeders. And then there's another like 10,000 people just circulating around that could be a breeder, only have ever been to a show, bought one snake, think about it sometimes, but haven't pulled the trigger to go deeper. So, but those are like very like those people like cycle in and out cuz they like bought a banana, they thought about breeding, they decide not to breed, they move, they sell their snake. That That's those people.

>> Mhm.

>> And I'm just guessing those numbers. I have no idea. But those are baby people who could buy breeder store animals on top of the people who are already participating in the marketplace. So maybe potential customers is like 12,000 people. Am I like exaggerating?

>> No. I I think I think when you're talking about like 12,000 potential customers, we're probably talking about price points of like two maybe $3,000 and up per snake.

>> Oh, that price point. I think it's more like.

>> Okay, maybe it's 50,000 people. I don't even think it's all the people who have ball pythons because a lot of stores are like pet stores that have ball pythons.

>> Yeah, that's also.

>> And flippers. I don't think they will want an investment grade ball python. I just think it's just to keep in mind like everyone's like Yeah. Uh, the market's huge. The market for pets is gigantic. Millions of people. Millions of people could want a a ball python as a pet. But the.

>> Did Stephen just say like four and a half percent of the US population owns a pet reptile or something?

>> Uh, but something. It's it's whatever that number is compared to your population.

>> It's in the millions to have a pet reptile.

>> Right. But most pet reptiles are not ball pythons.

>> Yes. The pet reptile is, you know, leprecha gecko, whatever it might be. It's actually supposedly turtles.

>> Or turtles.

>> Lots of turtles.

>> That's what I hear on the streets.

>> Lots of turtles.

>> And those people don't want to breed turtles, but they could get a public. Uh, to me, this is like mostly fine. Um, I think like a year ago I sort of predicted the trough and peak if it as a percentage of this trough and peak because there's like a relationship between the number of people.

>> In and actually it was almost correct.

>> So, it I think it was like 15% change from 22. No, what year is this? What year are we in now? 22, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26. Okay.

>> Yes.

>> So, if it goes down another 15%, that'd be fine. Or if it stabilizes where it is, that'd be fine. I don't know what'll make Reddit happy, but here we are. Uh, do you think breeders have more reptiles than keepers? Yes. Oh, 100%. I don't. I think it's very rare to find a keeper more than more than five.

>> I know some have more than to like 10, 10. But but I think.

>> I can see that be more than five.

>> That's just a special kind of person that just wants that many pets of any kind of thing. Like, do you want five dogs?

>> Some people do.

>> Yeah, some people do. But isn't that a special kind of dog owner who's like, I want to adopt every dog possible?

>> But in general, breeders have more reptiles than keepers. Yeah.

>> Yes. That's fine. I'm not that depressed about it. I'm just surprised about the shape. Uh.

>> Yeah.

>> I want it to go like this. It's quite flat, but that's okay. Uh.

>> Clown is clowning.

>> Oh, sweet mother god. Uh, it's just still doing what it has been doing for a long time, which is going down. So, I was hoping it would like stabilize around 120ish for a female, but I don't think it's really doing that. So, that's okay.

>> Oh, he corrected his question. He meant no, like all the breeders versus all the keepers. If you number all the breeders collections together.

>> No, I think all keepers have more total animals.

>> I would agree with that.

>> It's based on lifespan. Uh, they should. I don't know if they've killed them all or whatever. Didn't take care of them good, but they should cuz we've been bringing in ball pythons for a long time, right? A lot of people have like an old normal that they got 15 years ago or something from a pet store. Not all those snakes make it, but a lot of them do. Uh, those people have a pet now, right?

>> Mhm. Mhm.

>> This is a new one. Breaking news.

>> You need a breaking news banner and a sound effect.

>> I should just probably use OBS, but I do have a different background. Wait, should probably use it. Oh, [ __ ]. They're breaking news. Let's go team.

>> Sorry. All right. Sorry. Okay. So, this is new. I wanted to do it because I wanted to do Pompei. Really? But they.

>> A lot of Pompei are misided.

>> And they're being auctioned.

>> And they're being auctioned. And.

>> There's not.

>> There's not that many like one per year ever because a lot of them are bought privately.

>> Yeah. They would be bought sought after privately and scooped up pretty quick.

>> Right. In this time period. So, they're not on there really, but but this sort of leads to like a popular combo begets a large number of its sort of constituent parts as byproduct problem because I think it's. I have the mean female is 233 and the mean male is 224, but like the spread there is like down to 80 bucks or whatever for a spotless clown, male or female, and then up. So, like, there's a lot of spotless clowns in existence because Pompei existed.

>> I wonder how the people in 2021 in 2022 feel about their females that they paid that much for.

>> I don't know. I think we all feel a lot.

>> They would have just they would have just bred them like the last year or so. Right.

>> Right. Right. And what this reminded me of, uh, you know, the Hemi. You probably heard it on Atra, but like the Hemingway quote, which was a reference to an older idiom, but slowly and then all at once.

>> Mhm.

>> Like slowly and then all at once. Like there's a predictable decline in price. You know, it's like 30% or whatever, maybe 40 sometimes, then a pandemic stabilization, but then at 50%. So sometimes I'm like, well, you either play way up here, you buy snakes for 10,000 and sell them when they drop to three and then get rid of them before even as an adult, they bred one time. Or you just play in the the trash with the pores basically. Cuz figuring out how long this curve happens is.

>> You know what's funny? Justin even said that one time. He's like, you either buy it at the top or play with it when it gets down really low. He's like, the middle's the the middle's the problem. Middle's the whole bag, right? The bag holder, right?

>> Yeah. Basically.

>> He says you can make like you can absolutely make money if you're one of the first like in 2016 and then around 2024 when they're cheap and you can buy the combos for cheap, then you could do well with it as well at the same time.

>> Yeah. I still think though we're in a new paradigm because everything is cheap together right now. So you can't polish a turd if the whole market is cheap together. Uh, what's up AJ? One 123 gene clowns are a tough sale. Uh.

>> It's a fair statement. Pides are still popular. Like I'm sure pet people are still buying the crap out of banana pides. Yeah, I was going to do that, but then I got depressed and I did spot nose clown instead because it's like 2,500 instances. Oh, yeah. Back for spot noses. People bought spot noses here that were misided. There's quite a few records of old expensive.

>> Normals. Normal.

>> Normal clowns. So, I'm sure they are very happy.

>> And the banana clowns are doing okay. I'm still depressed about it. I was hoping they would like the females would stay around 450, 500. They came down third quarter and then I got mad. I got really mad. But they're pretty and they don't need to be $5. Thank you. Uh, I did do Cypress Clown. It's gone up a tiny bit on the female, down on the male. I think they're probably really cheaper than that technically now because I don't know if pet people have locked on that they look cool. We'll see.

>> Ghost.

>> No females sold. Is that crazy?

>> That were on auction?

>> That is crazy.

>> A couple males sold though, not on auction. That's [ __ ].

>> They are cheap.

>> They're basically a lot of the single recessives are like $100 or less. If you cut out that co stuff, it makes a normal trajectory.

>> Well, except for it bounced up again, but you. Yeah, if you cut out like 2020, 2021 to like 2023, it kind of just goes about it as normal way, right? We have the depression of 2019, 2018 in the market.

>> Mhm. And it spiked again, which was like a. I don't want to call it a dead cap bounce, but like it was definitely just a spike and then it just went down. It normal trajectory back to where it should be. It's been, you know, around for.

>> Almost 20 years.

>> I think this proves like pet people don't look at a DG and go like, yeah, that's.

>> It's a normal. They're being wholesaliled as normals to the pet stores regardless of what they look like at 500 gram. I've told this to people before. I'm like DGs are not a pet animal. People just look at them as a brighter a highway. An albino will sell for DG.

>> I know. Isn't that crazy? I still think they look pretty good.

>> They do.

>> They're for like.

>> They're for us. Okay. They're for us.

>> Yes. They're They're probably never going to really impact good the same as clown now. Yes. And in some ways many of them are the same and becoming same coded. Are BP's keepers going to fall to the Hemingway curse in 20? What is the Hemingway curse?

>> Yeah, I don't know of it.

>> All right. Uh, no female normal puzzle sold regular, just a male for $300. Okay. Uh, hyper puzzle still doing okay. It is going down. This price is interesting to me because these were sale function prices.

>> I know everybody loves sale function prices, but I I don't know how long people are going to whatever want to keep uh making stuff up. That's what I have to say. Sunsets down. There are retail sunset sales, so you can sell them that way if you want to. It's not down that much. The male price is basically the same. Female price is down $75. But like the number of these are we're all auctions and there's nothing wrong with doing auctions. I'm not saying that. But I just I would like to know the price of a sunset.

>> Without having to spy on auctions 24 hours.

>> Yes. And then and I don't think. I don't think an auction is the retail price of a sunset.

>> I we've talked about this before. I think when you have this many auctions, it is setting the new market price.

>> Yeah.

>> A single a single auction doesn't set it, but a consistent like where there's smoke, there's fire, right? Where it consistently is at and as long as they're roughly in the same ballpark, it'd have to set it.

>> Right. Sunset does come in not $5. So, like that's good for sunset.

>> Right. I hear that.

>> Get some bids on it.

>> And I mean, the one interesting thing about like if you keep consistently seeing a new sunset male every week on auction, it discourages people from buying the static listing because they're just going to wait for the next auction.

>> Correct.

>> Because it's consistently shown there.

>> Right. Uh, B says 5 to 600, which you think that's the retail price? That would make sense if like that the the listed price was 8.74 and the discounted DM negotiated price is.

>> 600.

>> 5600.

>> Yeah, that sounds.

>> And then on auction they end now at like 3400. So it's like double.

>> Males will be 3400 this spring I think like static listing probably at five.

>> I just want people to do static listings more. What? Can I just selfishly ask for that?

>> I wish they would do it without the inquire button on everything. There's a breeder here in Canada does that a lot.

>> Yeah. I just just a little more. Just let me know. Like I want to know what people are interested in. Like what if what if right now something is so hot we don't even know about it because it's just all hidden and it's all in DMs and nobody wants to record their wins in public for other people to see. Like, look at this. I sold this snake. It was $30,000. All of those should be on Morph Market so people can see that people have a demand for that at that price. What? Don't you want to see that?

>> I wonder if that has to do with their marketing. Like they just feel like there's no point because they sold it privately. There's no point listing on Morph Market and it's just like it's extra work for them. It is extra work, but it's not for you to to like.

>> And their customers.

>> It's your future buyers. They're like, "Oh, you have that and you had it in the past and it was nice and wanted to buy it."

>> It's using Morph Market as a marketing tool.

>> Yes, please do that again. I think it's good for the hobby to see people buying stuff and being like, "That's cool." Uh, it's it's good for projects to see like the pinnacle of it on the market. Even if it's like the [ __ ] you, I don't want to buy it, sell it price. That's I think it's good. Try stripe. I don't I can't remember how many I I had to. It's not very many. Let's put it that way. I think this was like an outlier. Something was like way overly expensive. Uh, they're also going down. Uh, yeah, it kind of went up though. Males went off.

>> Kind kind of, but like the N is not high.

>> Finally did this because there's enough recent plain sold static.

>> Because a lot of monsoons were Mojave.

>> Uh, Phantom, special.

>> Banana.

>> Banana or pastel or spider for a long time and so there wasn't enough of anyone kind and there still kind of isn't. That's why there's a giant gap in the graph cuz lots of Mojave monsoon sold at this time. But we have more recently and the most recent static sales for the whole year pulled together are $3,000ish dollars for both genders.

>> That makes sense.

>> That doesn't.

>> Right. And so there are more listed right now that are cheaper than that, but they're not that many of any one kind that's exactly the same. So, next year this will be lower on a graph because there's a bunch in the $1,500 range right now for sale static.

>> Yeah, I know someone that has a lesser monsoon male. May say the retail is about three.

>> Right.

>> That's on the retail list, I believe. So, like it makes sense even the normal being around three. Crazy that a Mojave one sold for 500 bucks on auction. Nobody wants to change the. You don't have to change the sold prices. It's just we got to get back to a world where Morph Market is a way to check retail. Like, what is what is even retail right now?

>> During co. Morph Market was like the place to price to gauge price for everything.

>> Right. People still use morph to like, oh, what should I price my show stuff at? Like, and then I'm gonna cut the price.

>> By 20%.

>> Or whatever, right? Yeah. But if the retail price is like not really the price anybody's selling it for, is that retail price? I I just I don't know what we're doing anymore. That's all.

>> Hopefully 2026. People seem to be slowly predicting a better 2026. So, we will see if they prove true or not.

>> Well, yeah. Send me some evidence. I would love.

>> You predicted that it was only going to be like the downturn was supposed to, you know, most people predicted downturn was almost be a little gully from the big short. Just a little gully and it's been a few years now.

>> That's the bull trap. I was thinking about like doing the euphoria curve.

>> Yeah. And then I was like, that's just going to piss people off. But I still think we're like we're not in uh we're somewhere in the like uh I don't know the middle of it. We're not bottomed yet unfortunately. Uh Dream Signal is still doing good and it has a lot of static volume sales and I love that for them. Good for you guys. Um.

>> I can see people just buying dreams because they want to make them.

>> Yes.

>> Or they always wanted one and now it's in a price range. A breeder even could just be like, I just want to buy this one and stick it in my rack.

>> Good. I'm I'm like so happy. I'm mad about it cuz like thank God.

>> They're so pretty. Honestly.

>> They're still six $500ish. And obviously all of these combos if you add more stuff to it, they get become more expensive. That's not what's like up for debate. It's just like the the the floor, the combo floor, I think, begets the additive pricing of putting an incomplete dominant in it. And some people disagree with that, but that's how I think most people operate with their pricing.

>> Yeah, I think it I think it works.

>> Okay. Hypoclown is not doing that good. Uh.

>> It's where you expect it to be. I know, but I don't. It was doing pretty good like here.

>> Yeah, hypo had a bit of a bump in general there though.

>> It's still.

>> It's still okay relative to like the price through time.

>> Yeah.

>> $1,400. It's better than other ones, right? Like this one.

>> It is like.

>> Holding. It's holding. Well, there's it's another thing where like the static listings that sell are the ones that are using the sale function and so they become lower than the lowest low static function.

>> Excuse me.

>> We love that for us. Again, I don't like I don't I know you guys want to hide everything from everyone, but you're only hiding it from yourselves. So, one of these days we got to decide what the price of clown pie is going to be and we just stick to it because it's still at least a pi, right? It's a pi.

>> It's cool looking pi. I think they're.

>> If we want to bring the price back up to 500, I don't think anybody would complain that much. What do you think about that?

>> Yeah, I think that's fine. I think you stabilize double.

>> In that $4 to $500 range. I think that's totally reasonable.

>> That's what I want to happen. Okay. Because I feel like I have a psychological barrier in my brain around like a double. Does it need to be $100 right this second? Is it do we have so many alive in this world that right this second they should be also be $100? If we are pricing individual recessives in the $150 range, then doubles at like 500 seem reasonable for what it is, then sure.

>> It should be.

>> If 500 is for a girl, fine. But 350 to five, whatever. But I actually think we should get rid of gender differential pricing.

>> What? That's I think we should just price them all the same. 500 bucks across the board. Or if you want to.

>> I wish people did like 400 bucks across the board.

>> Sorry.

>> Like yearly price decisions and maybe like repriced at the end of the spring or something. Like in my brain for me this year, this combo is this much and then I'll repric in the spring if I didn't sell enough because I feel like people are repricing a lot. Everybody's repricing all the time and so stuff will like quarterly hemorrhage down 20% 20% 20%. And I'm like, I don't know if it needed to like.

>> We go back to the old way like Garrick De Meyer does it. I think he still sets a price per year.

>> Yeah. And I know we're moving fast now. We're in a fast world. But I just like in a combo where there aren't that many instances of it. Like, there's only 50 on Morph Market. You don't all have to collectively be repricing. You could all agree together, not on purpose, but just on accident because it's just all posted at the same time. Like, nah, we're all around 500 bucks this year, and then re-evaluate next year. Nobody should buy a boy clown pie with other jeans, without other jeans.

>> What if I.

>> But what about if there's like a like clown pie males are premium pets and we just decided that arbitrarily? What if we decide that Jes is also not doing great the static listings? 1,000 females, 475 males. You can find them cheaper than that already, but like, there's there's always been a lot of stuff mixed in to clowns.

>> It was heavily mixed.

>> Right from the beginning.

>> This is like a terrible looking like.

>> When it became popular back then. Um, it's always been mixed, right?

>> It is a big like price difference.

>> 23 to 25.

>> Yeah. Two years.

>> That's a lot.

>> You've lost 90, 95% almost 93%.

>> Right. Uh, I don't think even though this to me it's cool looking. Sorry Shane. Uh, I for whatever reason I think people like this one less than other doubles.

>> I think it's cuz of G-stripe. Just being Gstripe.

>> Sorry, I meant for breeding. Yeah, for breeding purposes. Yes. But I think we got to get back to being like, okay, this is going to be premium pet and then like price it that way if it's not really good enough for breeding anymore. Like, I don't know if people need a male dreamsicle either really that doesn't have anything in it, but it's cool looking. So, can clown pie be cool looking? I think it can if we just let it.

>> What do you think of that?

>> Has to be a little white though.

>> Bad people some of them like highway or.

>> Yeah. But then it doesn't. You can just get a highway pie for cheap.

>>

No, I know. Unless you really like that headstand. Um, like the OD heads cloud pides have like a triangle or a cross. I think a pet person might be interested in that.

They could be. I don't know. Pet people are weird. They like weird things. They like they have a vibe for like an individual animal and they just have to buy it.

Yeah, it is true. Call it Morty. Put it Call it Monty. They all call them Monty. Put it in a tank and feed. Most of them don't anymore. They call him Nagini. Nagini is the new Monty. is a new mafy.

Cuz everyone's too young. Kesi a lot. Ew. God, I just Sorry. It's okay if you call your snake khesi. Uh, it's just it's very now coded DG clown static listings. Females 809, males 750. Last quarter. They I know they're cheaper than that now. Okay. But like I think we're going to start seeing like the pastel DG clowns to be cheaper than the non.

What do you think of it? Hasn't quite happened yet, but that's not surprising though. No. Oh well. DJ Pides almost none sold at all that were static or there was a couple on auction but not like a million. I don't know. This one is like a rarer double than people think it is, but it crashed so hard so fast.

Right? I think people are like some reason really against this, but like see how there's like not both genders. Not that many have ever even been born and somehow they're already not cool. So, if you're like one of the 20 people who are producing them, you all could just be like uh I don't know, a little more picky about pricing if you wanted to be because there's you don't I don't know. I'm dying. I'm dying rationalizing what's happening. News is new. This is VPI exanthic, by the way. So, we know the Asians love exanthics.

Do they? Was there a particular reason why? I don't know. They just think it's pretty. So like their market prefers it more than I think even our market. So I was like, okay, let's just see. A and I think if they're rarer on average here because there's always been a division between the exanthic types, but VPI is the most common. So that's the one I picked for all of these combos. And these graphs aren't as sad.

No. To like this curve is not as sad looking to me. It's a pretty natural course except for that email drop from 23 to 24. Well, here's your like big one pandemic relationship. It like spreads out the female male pricing because there are more people being breeded than ever before. So they'll like overdo the price discrepancy between genders.

Mhm. I think this is I think what we should all strive for honestly. Hell yeah. Uh positivity. This is a nice normal more being born every year price curve. And it didn't magically collapse in 22 the way a lot of other stuff did. It just kind of went down. I mean, this is a bigger drop percentwise, but like you had a chance to be having fun. You still have a chance even still have a chance.

Uh, this one's newer, so there's not that much data to go by, but this is VPX Desert Ghost. It's weird that they're switching. It's they're doing the male female switch in this year. So, this is a big difference here, but this is the same. That's an interesting one. That is interesting to me.

Oh, and if you're on the audio only version, I'm already sorry. You should probably watch this on YouTube. I don't necessarily read all the numbers, but like males have females are the same. And then True Ghost is better. Not by a lot. It's not a popular combo, but it's technically higher now than it has been in years. And it's a very old double.

It is a very old double. Very old double. Didn't TSK do it first? Maybe. But did they do it with TSK? I don't know. They might tell with BPI. Hello. I know. Um, but it is old and it's holding. Either way, people are really into that. I have heard a lot of chatter about it. People are into the True Ghost. They want DG versions which have been hatched.

Um, yeah. And I think the DG True Ghost is fine looking, but I kind of like them separate better. Like the True Ghost is its own thing and then the DG is its own thing cuz they're like two different colorways. I mean, the DG True Ghost looks more like a ghost than it does looks like a DG exanthic. Yes. You know what I mean? It's a very unique, very cool look.

Right? I think maybe the Asians are helping with this because they do like this color palette, right? So, the exports are very this stuff coded. Okay. I don't know if you've noticed that. No. Okay. Well, I'm just telling you the Asians like it. Yeah, I believe you. Uh I like it cuz I like gray snakes and I'm a degenerate. Yeah.

I just don't know how much a lot of these doubles like I don't know why we're giving up on them a lot of them. So I'm like I don't want someone to really stack and make a true ghost five other recessives right this second. I'd rather have someone just put anything into true ghost. Like that would be way more interesting to me. It's interesting that we've given up on some of this stuff like true goes for example um or doubles like people drop the price kind of statically when they are very underworked or uncommon for a while and you already have two inexpensive recessives. So like why wouldn't $1,000 for a male be reasonable. Been around for 20 years? Yeah. How much time we have left? We have time. We have lots of time.

Okay, I was going to title this episode ball pythons cross the Rubicon and then my husband's like, "Are you nothing posting again?" And I'm like, "You're right. You're right." But but this is what I feel right this second. Shed testing is the ball pythons's crossing the Rubicon. You cannot put it back in the box. It's will be different. And I think a lot of people are like, "No, no, no. it'll be the same but just a little faster." And I'm like, "I don't think so anymore." People's behavior is not indicative of that future. People are behaving like they don't really care about um selling a adult triple hat female for $200 on Morph Market. They're like, whatever, she's just a hat. Well, if you don't care about that, then you don't really care about the triple visual. because you don't value it. Heads are nothing anymore. And you're okay. Okay. So, if we don't care about it because shed testing has made everything equally accessible to everyone, then what is the future after that? Boom. Now, we discussed what is a post multi-reessive meta even look like? Because I feel like people are already giving up on some doubles. They're like, "This double sucks. I don't even want to add any jeans to it. Uh some doubles are $200 and then they're like, "But the triple with these this double in it is 15,000." I'm like, "Is it?"

Speaking of shed testing, I have a question for chat. Is anyone in chat willing to buy POS hats anymore? I'm very curious on that. Like, are POS hats even a thing at all? See, are they of interest to anyone anymore? I doubt it. Cuz I'm curious if people just like I don't even want to bother with the test or they think like they're being scammed or something. I mean, that might have been true for a while. My thing is like the big five, six, depending on how you like cut it. I was hoping they would hold up better longer, but I don't think they really are at by the end. The big 56 you mean? Yeah. like not 67 56. 67. Monson sunset puzzle. Uh zebra and then potentially like monarch and what's the other one whatever just another expens kind of expensive one. Machine popped up. It's because I I did that Jenzy lingo he knows he's in um I'm just concerned about them. I know everyone's like, "Yeah, but it it already needs to be hit. It already needs to be a double visual." But I'm like, "Motherfucker, you haven't even made anything in that combo. Do you need to be auctioning off adults now? Adult females of that morph now." And then nobody cares about the price of the base because they've already moved on. And I'm like, you haven't even made anything in the base. I've seen people ready to breed pastel triple females or maybe it's a male, but it's like triple hat males that are ready to breed and they're like sunset. Jessica's dying.

I'm so dying. It's like hat sunset hat something that's something and I was like that's kind of interesting that that's being scored. Right. You're giving away with shed destined the keys to the kingdom of that combo potentially. So, it speeds things up to the point that we will have like burned through all combos or whatever, right? And then you did send me a copy of Aussy's newsletter. And if he's saying he's waiting for the market to value an incomplete dominant equal to that of a recessive, he's already living in a post recess multi-recessive meta anyway. I think some of those guys already are 100%. Right. Maybe Will is, but I I I don't think the I don't know if Justin Keons are and I don't think Justin is. I think other people they bought their recessive projects like the last two years, right? They made their triple heads. Yeah. Yes. So, they're not even ready to be there. So, I don't know. And then auctions are obviously I know people like them and I know they move snakes but I think they olude and then undermine the ability to be like this is expensive because it's rare. How rare can it be if someone's willing to auction it and not care the price of it? Well, I saw an incomplete dominant clown with four quints on auction the other day. Oh, four hats. Four hats. Yeah. Yeah. Sorry. Not four quints. Yeah. Four heads. Right. Does that person value that snake as much as a male? You think that should be in a world where testing exists and they could breed that to whatever and know exactly what that male's head, right? You can take that breed to whatever one of the hats are and you're making more.

Shut testing. It works 60% of the time every time. What about that? That's right. So, it's fine. The auctions exist, but like what will happen after that? Because we've given away all the keys to the kingdom. All the things are worth will be worth the same amount. Got to work your projects. Six years. So some people propose a like vibesbased pricing paradigm where you're like, "Well, this looks nice. This is the genetic composition. That's why it's expensive." That's subjective to what looks nice, right? You like dark morphs, so you might value the dark morph more. Now, there's other people like dark morph, so they might value the same thing. I like hypo. I mean, Scrambler is like the best example of this right now where people are just like, I don't know, this looks Scrambler to me. And then they just it looks nice and so they're like, it's 1,500 bucks. And they're like, okay. Yeah, the Scrambler thing is interesting. But it's maybe Scrambler is fine because nobody really cares as long as it's cold. Bananas and pies are king. That is true. Cuz they buy. I crowd. I think also because we have to run we're running out of time. Capitulation took too long. I thought you like we have 45 minutes. 40 minutes. Yeah. Okay. Capitulation took too long. I think people were thinking there'd be more capitulation sooner. Capitulation happened earlier in other bare markets and so they were expecting a valley whatever 18 months later. But our demographic bulge that happened because of COVID did not. And I know I said bulge and it will get everybody really excited, but let's move on was too much. And so like I'm just like where's my real capitulation? You know what I mean? Why isn't the number of vendors on morph market 1,000 vendors? Is that what we really need? I lots Kool-Aid drinking. Sure. People trying to get their money out. I don't know. It doesn't matter why it happened. It just did happen. So like this will make so that we end up in a post recessive meta sooner because they will all be doing the same kind of thing together. I think I think we've seen the I think we've seen uh I think we've seen some of the uh changes to that, right? I have yes we are doing it towards like the postmultivessive meta. I have heard like the I don't know what to call it people talking in small discussions about project based breeding more so than like just chasing like oh multi-recessives right just stacking stacking breeding versus project breeding which is like the true growth is a project right and then putting more incomplete dominance into that to make it more appealing. And so in the true grows, maybe you add in stranger for that dark look or you add in I really like hypo mjave. So you throw Mojave in there and then you put maybe another orange on top like mandarin. You put something else in there. Super or you do super ashalts, super gravels, get that really cool patterning. I mean, that's the dream is that people would settle down and just start to work on something that they'd like. instead of tracing a bag, right? And then adding recessives because I've heard pentuple versions that I'm like that doesn't even sound appealing. Um, if you ever hit the visual and then I'm like, what are we doing? You are ensuring like the other thing is like it used to be a benefit if you did a pentuple to a pentuple all the doubles that come off could be sold and you keep the triple and test for hats or whatever and test everybody. Mhm. But in that world, we've created a universe where nobody thinks the doubles are even worth working anymore because they're not a project anymore. They're just a stepping stone to a pentuple. Well, we're also you can't sell the byproduct of a pairing. People are kind of at the point where they think where triples are pretty much being skipped over. I know. What are we doing? What are we doing? Triples are looked at as like, oh, this is the stepping stone. What a loser. do the quint and the quintuplets quads. It just there has to be like a point where everybody's like, "Well, that's a [ __ ] waste of time and let's just work on what we want to do for fun, okay? Because it you're already doing it." And I've heard the argument like, "But we haven't hit all the combos." And I'm like, "I don't care. We haven't hit all the combos in corn snakes. People still moved on because they were over them because they had too many babies and like the market switched to ball pythons. the market could get tired of our [ __ ] and move on to another species because they're just like, I don't want to keep putting together brown snakes to brown snakes. Well, to try to hit a pentuple, what I'd rather just work on like true ghost stacking or g-tribe clown stacking or whatever they want to do. So, people need to value those snakes and not only value this like distant kind of hobby breeding, like hobby project breeding or something. I don't know. I mean, people tried to switch another species and we're seeing we already talked about uh oh uh Illuminati got him. So that's very cool. Uh oh. Oh, he's back. That went out real fast. The Illuminati got you. Yeah. Very cool. We have to talk about snakes about about hog noses and the stalk report. Big hog. Big hog logged in. And Big Hog with the Bald came in after me. Bon Vu is very happy with his one Corvette. Well, I mean, the other thing is like things were the way they were in the past. They are the way they are now, and they'll be some way in the future. But the way we do things in the future is not necessarily exactly the way they are right now or what we were told was a good idea five years ago. It's just going to be different. Other thing, bullet point, Asian markets fetal has proven to us that Koreans have are not shy about re-exporting stuff back to the US after they bought it all at top pricing and like pushing it back. Whatever the Asian markets prefer, it doesn't go into a black hole and stop existing, right? So, if they decide to form a breeding culture, they're just going to export it back to us. Right. So like if they really love VPI ex combos, that'll be what they produce the most of and export back out again. It's interesting because everyone has access to those markets, but nobody has access to those. Like limited people seem to have access to those markets. But it's going to be re like you said those the ball pythons don't go into a black hole and they don't just they reproduce there and they don't just like die. So like there's still long live species there too. What's going to happen the next 10 20 years when they have too many adult ball pythons as well? Yeah. I don't know. They'll come right back. Right. Uh I uh I guess the the maybe like game theory here is to breed something that is not what they like for the future because if they are very into a certain kind of thing, they will do that kind of thing really well. You would want to be doing just something else. Tree monitors and condos. Thanks, Shane. That's the ironic part is if ball python people didn't get into to corn snakes, I mean hognoses, they bought tree monitors and condrs. Those are the three species that I've seen ball python people buy into pretty much. Leadership, and I put this in quotes because I haven't seen a lot of it, but the primary position I've seen people take is sell to Asian markets or wait till your peers get out. Those are the two solutions I feel like well to the North American market uh that I've heard from people. The wait till your competitor gets out is a long-standing idea in like capitalism right like there's the Amazon just waited out the other it was a bookstore right as a book company they just waited out they were losing money on a regular basis like how long can you survive before your competitor runs out of money who runs out of money first Amazon ran out of Well, they didn't run out. Their competitors ran out of money and Amazon took all the business. That's kind of what you're talking about. You're hoping someone runs out of money. Yeah, I just I It's fine that this is the way that it is, but it's just not like very inspiring uh messaging. Let's put it that way. Um, it's true. It's not inspiring. Also be smart. That's very cool. He's got tree monuing. No, it is cool. They are I hope they do well. And then the other thing is this is a Justin thing. So you can decide if this will happen or not. But he is proposing a future subtly. I don't think he's trying to tell people what to do because I just hear it in his little face. Verification will be the future form of value. And I think in his worldview verification is shed testing for genetics. So if you shed tested everything including incomplete dominance and you proved air quotes for audio only people that it had all those genes in it by a third party. That's why it's valuable. even if the exact same animal exists but wasn't proved by a third party. So, it's like grading PSA 10 grading your Pokemon cards or something. But, and he was alluding to like horses being registered and dogs being registered, but I'm like the proof there is different than the current worldview with shed testing. There's also two different instances in those two specific animal industries. One, most of the time when you sell animals, you they're spayed, they are part of contracts to be spay neutered, right? Even for horses often to like take care of that too for them too. So that is way more common. You don't just sell a snake to someone and you know they become a breeder. Like every pet animal will be sterilized essentially when they go from dogs and cats, right? are dog breeders. Even horses, I believe, have become gelians. Yeah. Most people don't Yeah. Yeah. Most people take off ovaries, but they will take off testicles. Yes. Yes. Um, so that doesn't happen in reptiles or specifically snakes or any reptile. So, I don't know how that would stand in our world considering anyone can just resell a pet snake and it can go breed. Well, his thought process was You need unique identifiers. So he was going to Michael peppers. No, no. Do the the head scalation is a unique identifier for a ball python specifically because their head scales are a pattern that you could recognize. Okay. With software. I don't I just don't know if that's going to work because you're also phasing out a large part of the ladder of breeding, right? with that because you're going to correct add a lot of cost to entry which are going to cut out a lot of the smaller breed like the younger breeders who kind of like stepped up into breeding, right? So the left want you to microchip your balls uh I do not want you to microchip your balls. So something like that is uh I I'm I'm curious about that because you're kind of but the entry having a higher barrier to entry or start. Yeah. Barrier to entry. Right? Like you broke down the barrier to entries with shed testing and you're going to rebuild them with shed testing again. That's his theory, right? Like anybody can have any gene they want and can easily make a pentuple head right this second technically and then the next year try to hit the visual. But the new barrier to entry is even more shed testing and lineage because you should buy it from me because I shed tested my baby and I have like lineage tracked in clutch or husbandry pro like that's but what I'm saying I don't think that's enough to deserve the title verification because I really think it should be a breed club. Right. I agree with you. I just don't know if that's enough for it because you're just saying I can pay for my verification. that kind of doesn't like to me that doesn't really add specific value. All right. And then also my thing was who verifies the verifiers because the verifiers are a for-profit entity, not a notfor-profit breed club that just loves golden retrievers and someone's very And speaking of a financial incentive to get you to test the [ __ ] out of everything and pretend that that makes it have value. And I don't know if he owns any part of it, but Justin's very close to RGI, so I don't know if he makes any money off it, but like it's kind of like it's interesting that he's buddy buddy. He's like, "Hey, do this and hey, use my system clutch to it's going to add value to your whole situation." So the canoba e the way he talks about he says he thinks ecosystem knowing them are even he will test even the ones he doesn't think the heads matter cuz knowing is valuable to his customers. No, I get that. I understand that he's saying test everything, like literally everything. But that becomes very costly at some point too for smaller breeders cuz won't that also just affect your ability to sell more animals? If I have six animals and I got to do a full panel on every What's the full panel at RGI? 100 bucks. I don't think there is a real full full one anymore. No, I think they cut it now like into pieces. But let's say they give a full full panel. It's 100 bucks. You got to spend $600 and potentially get no good holdbacks. I think he's just trying to create barriers to entry so less people can compete effectively and they will go away. It's pos I I wouldn't be like it's possible. I don't like to think people are that malicious, but maybe I'm just too hopeful sometimes. I mean, it's not even malicious. It's just like we need a new barrier to entry because something being a triple visual is not a barrier to entry. We've made it very easy to make everything that was once hard. Yes. He's trying to slow down. He talked about the velocity of Yeah. He talked about the velocity of the market in the industry speeding up. It was speeding up already and then it sped up further with shed testing and so now he's trying to slow it back down with shed testing. Yeah. I don't know if that's going to work. I think that's why I'm saying we crossed the Rubicon. I think things will be totally different. I don't know what they're open Pandora's box. It's not going back. Yeah, it's not going back. It is what it is. And there's clear benefits to shed testing at even a small scale or big scale or whatever. But then like it's we've fundamentally changed the structure of ball python breeding forever. Yes. And the other one was other value systems. Like you could confer value on an animal by making it really tame or selective breeding it for temperament like or selective breeding it for I did a video about that. I did the video first. You did it first. Yes. But I wasn't my comment wasn't on your video. I was famous on their video. Okay. But the one interesting thing they did mention was if not every trait is inheritable or like selectable to be inherited or more important had a very low rate possibly of being inherited. That's correct. And they were talking at not like specific like being docile or feeding but it was interesting what people were what they said like that might not be worth selecting right because it's just so unlikely to happen. Well, usually there's a heritability coefficient, right? Like height in humans is heritable, but it's also deeply dictated by how much and what quality of food you get growing up. So, it's like 60% or whatever, 50%. So, you can test for it, but you can also like make a total package. And let's let's just ignore testing. [ __ ] I'm so tired of testing. If you were just likely breeding and doing things to the animal to make it tame and like to live in a big enclosure and all this stuff, that would add value to a ball python breeding system over someone who doesn't do any of those things. Hypothetically, in a in a world where we value different things about ball pythons, not just their color, right? Um, people have tried that. Well, they tried that with color, like lime breeding. People have tried to like make better versions of pastel, like brighter. It never held because they wanted higher prices, but there's there's too many people willing to undercut them. And people are just like ball python people in like I don't care what pastels what. I the $400 one and the $200, right? But if we get to the point where all the snakes are $100, right? Then you would go back to that. I'm doing that with hund milkakes. I'm hunting down a male that's more docile than normal because I want to breed to my fairly docile female to make hopefully less skddish baby. So less crappy on people's hands. Justin has little to no pairings that aren't worth testing to him. I think he doesn't test a lot of things to be clear. He makes a lot of snakes, but I think the idea is that he he's trying to like make a super class of snakes that are the fully tested, right? That's I think that's he wants to do and he's if he's if people are going to follow the leader I feel like that's what he's trying to do right because people follow like people often follow Justin. So if people do that then they think well I get more value from animals because mine are tested then they're going to start testing their animals especially like you know even if it's something pretty visually like out there. I wouldn't be surprised if Justin tests most of it or like he said he does he says he tests for everything he possibly can because he thinks Right. So it's DJ clown. Oh, is it yellow belly or not? And he tests for the yellow belly complex, right? As an example, he might even test for DJ and clown, right? Might as well. You might as well panel, right? And that's fine. But like that is a a choice that we don't all have to do if we don't want to. Like value doesn't have to be have a middleman inserted into it. That's how I'm feeling about it more and more. I'm like, what are you guys talking about? It's a visual clown. You shouldn't have to prove that it's a clown when you see that it's a clown, right? Yeah. He's trying He's trying to get the sale. He's trying to talk about I know, but I just don't think by the time from Justin or Kenova cuz it's proven that it's clowns. It's I test everything so you know exactly. I'm not lying to you. I know. But I think my my caramel albino in there. I would love people to be like, I've made sure everything's not het caramel albino. I think that's a very strong because you don't want visual caramels and you don't want them to be het secretly. People spend for shed testing. People spent a lot of money on DG stuff and popped out DG caramel binos and like those were the only DGs in the clutch and I'm like that sucks. It does suck. Uh maybe it's fine. The market chills out. Yeah, I mean it's chilling out right now as we speak. So, uh, yeah, I think that's fine. I don't know why I was based, but thank you. It's not worth testing. Yeah, I 100% sure because he he says it I'm sure he sends him straight to the pet store. I just think like the idea that everyone will have to test everything that they think is good just to prove things they already know are true is not a world I'm really that comfortable with because even in breeds where you I don't know you have a dog and you're like it's a purebred German shepherd and I run it to a purebred German shepherd you don't have to prove over and over again that they're still German shepherds you're just like this is the mom this of the data registered them as such. There are some like hobbies that breed where they have you have to put the the father's DNA into like a repository just in case somebody breaks out and has sex with a bunch of people and you're like uhoh who's the daddy. So in goats very amorous they break out a lot you have to have like uh sire's hair in reserve just in case of emergency. Who's your daddy? Who's your daddy moments? Goats, man. But like to to register a goat, it's like 10 bucks or something. I don't know what the AKC amount is like to register puppies. It's probably not that much. I just feels like this is like a price barrier that still doesn't necessarily tell you anything about lineage necessarily. It's just like Yeah, it definitely is a clown. Yeah. That you can visually see. That's somebody Do you have any more slides? No. I just I just I just wanted to talk about Caesar mostly. That's fine. Somebody earlier said, "What do you think of the Vulta ball pythons?" Which at this point, I kind of feel like it's a hit or miss, right? Like I just still want to know what they think that they're talking about the Volta ball pythons. They believe it. Are they talking like they just find any big one and they're like, "That's from this region." I don't know. Are they talking about ones that are near the river? Are they talking about ones that are in that like state? I just think they they just find any big one and they assign that name to it. I know there's some I believe in Canada somebody's trying to get $700 for one like straight up just a female. But at the same time, it's cool to have bigger snakes that lay bigger clutches, except does that not also hurt the ball python market? Like doesn't that hurt your project at the same time? If someone could get me ball pythons from Volulta region or river, whatever that they had like coordinates for where they collected it and it was like a real thing cuz see how long this is. Mhm. Okay. Which part of that produces Volta ball pythons? I don't know. Is it Is it like right next to this part? Like they cross the border. They're not Volta ball pythons anymore. I think they literally just pick any big one that comes in. They're like this is a Oh, I'm sure you're right. It's just like if you go like uh Guyana and Surn like share borders like they pick up a snake in Guyana like oh well this is a Guyana boa and oh this is surname because depending on what side the border is but they I'm sorry this picture is small. All right let's I get your point. Walt is a long chunk of land with islands. What do the ball fight the islands look like? That would be cool. I would love to know the I don't know. And then like the we get ball p from Togo. Are these ones not cool enough? Volta ones too. I think people just looked on to this idea, right? I know. I guess that's just what I'm getting at is I would like people to be more Do you think we should develop a test for it to prove it's pure? No, because you'd have to go there and test wild ones, not ones we think are big. Well, we can send Ben there. Doesn't affect me. Ben, go do something for us. I just think here's what I think. I don't think people will stop burning ball pythons probably ever, let's be honest. But I don't know if like the culture of ball pythons will be the same moving forward. And it's up to people personally to decide what they want the culture to be. That's all. Like if you want to follow dear leader of whichever kind persuasion you want, then do that. But you don't have to. And you are one of like 2,000 people on morph market. So you're actually like a larger percent than you think of like the value chain. So just don't uh Is that weird? I'm just like continuously floored, you know, that's all. Yes. Right. For AK. Yes. And I think that's what Justin's getting at is he's like, okay, we have a lot of ball pythons in the world. A lot of people have access to a lot of morphs and recessives. There's nothing particularly rare about anything except for actual new rare genes like Cosmos or whatever. like those ones have live in a number so we'll have a value but how do we like go beyond that and like codify a combo as better than some other combo right Ben said they're working on lineage test I think there's one for indigo indigos right indigos there's paternity and maternity is that what you That's much easier than purity. Like, you know what I'm saying? Yeah. You'd have to you'd have to go here, find ones here that you know weren't moved by people. You have to test a lot of them. You'd have to get the largest pure like these micro satellites respond in this way in this region and then take all the ones in captivity and be like do they represent any amount of somewhere else. So you would need micro satellites from here but also from here and here and here and here and here and here and then you would know if they're pure or whatever. Sounds like a lot of work that I don't want to do. It's fine. It's all fine. Uh, did we learn anything? Um, yes, we did. We learned clowns are holding up. A lot of things are doing great. I knew that was going to happen because I been sort of slow rolling adding extra doubles because it's a lot of work. That's cuz like they were kind of underappreciated to begin with to a degree. Yeah. Well, you know what I mean? I'm like, "Yeah, I like, but I don't like it enough to work with it. I'd rather I don't care enough forthic." So, I'm like, "Shame, right?" So, there's just less people on that ride all along, so they're doing better. Exantic Kenyon Samos are bust. Busting or bust? Oh, Kenyon Samboas are legit black and white forever. And they have all black eyes. Yeah, they're very cool. All right, whatever. mean comments y'all want to leave, leave in the comment, but I'll block you right away. No, delete it. Delete it and then they can repost it and say this person deletes comments and then you confirm them twice for engagement. Oh, okay. Yeah, I just it's I'm just looking for the like what is the heart of the Ber community like like what do you guys want really? I of the breeding community. Yeah, specifically North Talk about this specifically. I don't know. You're part of that community. What do you want? I just want people to like snakes again. I would I think it'd be fun for I feel like everyone's like, "This one's trash. That one's trash." Yeah, trash. Uh, all of the snakes I have are trash. I raise them up and I have to immediately auction them after breeding them one time. I feel like that is really bad for the world. It might be the way it is, but I don't think it's good because there was a time where you could be like, "Well, I can use her for three years or use her for five years or 10 years." I know. She raised She gave you eggs and you're going to throw her in the trash. It that part really upsets me a lot. I'm a hysterical woman. But Lisa says, "The University of Florida has genetic material for wild green tree pythons. A lot of other pythons they can use that. I don't know about boas, but I'm sure there are institutions that have genetic material." I'm sure there are too. I don't know. I just don't know. There just a lot of situations where like we need more. Uh well, the next comment by Blazing Blue Tongue, same thing like university for Indonesian skins. But you'd have to convince someone to want to study vault ball pythons sides versus like other re other parts of regions, right? That's right. They have to collect that data, but are they going to like does anyone want to do it? But people have already done stuff like like I'm kind of shocked that like we got to shed testing because I never thought anyone really cared enough to do it. I thought this would have been a thing 10 years ago when they don't need to go there. people already did maybe. Okay. So, if somebody went cuz they were doing like the the condro paper and they collected and have on reserve already condro samples. They didn't sequence the whole thing. They were looking for microatellites for some other purpose. That data set could be used for this purpose. But specifically for this situation, I don't even think when that the they get exported they're like that controlled. They're like, "We got these eggs from over here. We drove them in a truck for four hours. They take the eggs to incubate like a centralized depot. Where do those eggs come from?" I don't think we're even that in control of like knowing whatever, right? And I heard I've also heard like sometimes things like they'll fill up the quota in Togo, but like Ghana's better or Benine's better. They'll just illegally cross the border with them. Sure. So, I feel like if you wanted to know more about just wild ball python genetics, you'd have to go there specifically. I think Lisa's point is that they're closer than we think they are to that like poss. And that's possible, but I guess we need someone absolutely willing to do that testing. Project, right, for a period of time. If you get one set of microatellite DNA from one or two or three or five condro on one island, does that tell you the range of genetic diversity on that island sufficient to determine if that's a unique genetic space that you could identify? I feel like just like sample size is also relevant here. That's the problem with like current papers. They're like, "We checked all the rat snakes." Well, how many rat snakes did you check? We only checked 200 from whatever uh Massachusetts to Ontario over to wherever down. They only checked 200 individuals over that entire range and multiple species. Do we really know? Could you really ID to the exact thing? I don't know. cuz it's different like splitting species apart than a determining locality because you're looking for very specific minute differences that are smaller than species level differences. It would it would be interesting because you'd then have to reference anyone that claims they have a vulta in captivity, right? I guess you would start there. I would not start there. It's like starting someone who's wrong. You need a wild base. Yeah. And then but then you have to cross reference those people. Yes. You could test them against what you know to be true, right? But then you like that's why I think we're barking up some interesting trees here. Like people like, well, if I have one that I know is pure, that's how we'll tell all of them are pure. Even if you are sure it's pure, that doesn't give you like the range of genotypes that could come from that locality that are the kinds of things that are specific to that one only that you could test for that would tell you that that's true of that spot. Now, let's go back for a second. Is there any point to this? Is there an advantage to actually doing this other than for captive breeders wanting larger clutches for their own purpose, monetary purposes? I think in ball pythons there's that there just it's also like interesting. It is interesting from like a scientific point. Most ball python breeders aren't interested in the science of any of it. I think there's a lot of people that value things a certain way in captivity because they're pure and rare. That's fine, too. Just a large ball to verify that that is true. Like I think it's cool to have a large ball python as a pet because you know you get that large larger than a regular ball python without having to step into like let's say a boa that might be too big for some people. Boas are not too big for some people. That is true. No, they are. Somebody was talking a retake person was talking [ __ ] on boas of all things. She's like nobody wants boa and I was I didn't say [ __ ] but I'm saying it now. I'm like, Lily, [ __ ] you. They're like, no one wants boas. Retakes are way better. I'm like, excuse me. Maybe in your universe, brother. Uh, retakes are not way better. I see lots of people. So, I I see lots of people putting your ticks on sale. So, it's fine. I I it will happen eventually. People don't have to pay a lot of money. And your degree of certainty is directly related to how much data you collected to begin with. Mhm. Okay. And I think that's okay. It's good for science. I would love citizen science where somebody finds all the micro satellite DNA necessary to ID every island of Condro from each other. That'd be [ __ ] fire, honestly. But I don't think I don't know if we're there yet. That's all. That's fair. And you can add in all of the like samples that we have from all over the the world and and still probably need to do some sampling extra just scale clippings. I don't know like we had we were doing a genetic thing. It might have even been the paleontology lab. They did genetics for seal salamanders and the professor wanted me to like look at their skulls for some reason. I was like, "No, you're boring." But there were hundreds hundreds of seal salamanders from West Virginia all up in there because they just see like because you just need a lot. You need to reproduce it. I don't think we should call hundreds of conjurers in the wild, but scale clippings from a lot plus all the ones that we already know localities for would be good. What do you think of that? I think you have to go, right? I do have to go. All right. Very good. I don't think we learned anything. We just learned about science. Well, that vult python is a scam. It's not a scam. It's just a big snake. To me, it is just a big snake. Cuz you know how like monarchs are really big. Are they? Yeah. They're absolute units. Like the ones that are close to the original stock. Yeah. Are those vultas? I'm sure some people will claim it. Or are they just like big old units? I want a plain green tree python with no white or blue. That'd be very fire. No one ever mentions if they're right next to the phenotypic art. Yes, that's true, too. Like everybody everybody's job. This is your homework. Go on I naturalist and look at whatever you want online and just look at how much crazy variation there is. Like the second closest boa sigma to the US is like a relatively new picture. That snake looks five, six feet long. And it's hard to tell because it's like the the hand is holding the head, but the hand relative to the head is like this big. And knowing the sigma I have, I'm like, dwarf my ass. That thing is [ __ ] big. Sorry. Sorry. Uh, right. In San Diego County, you find both stripe and banded cow kings. That's cool. Yeah. Call your brakes are kings. Call your brakes. Yes. And all these animals love having sex with each other. So we don't know how much sex they had historically right now. You would have to test a lot to see like what the regional differences are to be like, "Yeah, we know this is pure for sure." That's all. Let's say goodbye. Goodbye. Merry Christmas again. Happy New Year. Merry Christmas. Everybody breathe ball pythons.