Most ball pythons look good as babies and thats what we tend to see on the market. (even when they have been up for over a year you still tend to see the baby picture posted)
Im interested in what you think good quality adults look like. Any Examples?
The posts below made me think.
Here is my over 8 year old 2016 pastel lesser I think I got lucky with. (you might disagree)
Edit. I didnt for this one but I now follow the above quoted advice
I got really lucky with my first breeding pair.
Male:
Pastel Enchi Special Mojave het orange ghost
Female:
Mojave Fire Coral Glow het orange ghost
I don’t have a photo of my male as a baby so I’m posting his identical looking son and the super enchi crystal daughter (paler color)
Female’s wild looking baby photo from her breeder
And the two of them together as adults
One more from just before she laid her clutch last week
The offspring from this pair were just as beautiful. They still have some growing to do. But at 2 years old.
Coral Glow Special Orange Ghost (pos fire)
And
Coral Glow Enchi super Mojave Orange Ghost
The color shifts on Coral Glows are so crazy. You really need to know what you’re getting into.
Also… That pastel lesser is beautiful. The color is so nice. None of the browning they can be prone to
I never knew Coral Glows could be so intense in color…
I guess thats why they are called that though lol. Very pretty 
Edit: Its also crazy seeing how light your girl got! She looks like a completely different snake but in a good way.
You’ve got some really nice animals there, armiyana and ascended! There are good quality coral glows/bananas out there but it’s tough to find them. Some combos are more likely to age better than others. When I get home tonight I’ll post a few of my snakes - I always ask for parent pictures and am very particular about what I pick up. In fact, sometimes it gets me a bad rap with other breeders (“she wanted parent pictures but then she didn’t buy the snake”) and I’m okay with that. If parent pictures aren’t up to my standard (or if they won’t send them, which has happened before), that’s the whole point.
I totally get it.
I used to breed leopard geckos and it would bother me so much when you weren’t able to see the parents for some of the line bred traits. I used to avoid those purchases as well
The breeder for my two up top was great about showing photos of dad or the moms on eggs and such. So I was set with that. Haha. And no surprise when I picked up another from them last year. I’ve seen photos of her breeder size aunt (same visuals) and she’s beautiful.
They also gave me a bit of a mystery though cause I now need to see if the Special is Noco or GCR line. The light crystal tested negative on Baker. Which is what the breeder and I thought was the Special line.
I’ve just picked up a Blk pewter that is so dark the owner I got her from didn’t know she had pastel in her. She’s got possible paradox markings around her face too. Photographs so badly for me though… But she’s definitely what I want in a dark morph like that. No idea on the lineage but I might test her and another BP gal of mine for Barhart just for my own curiosity.
I also didnt know an adult banana could look like that. Yes some look good but mostly yellow like a lesser banana.That orange is amazing and minimal freckles.
The slow market has made me adapt, I am only breeding a few morphs to develop quality.
As the market is slow, I am holding loads back for up to a year or so, just letting one go at a time as I start to see them develop. Hopefully I can make some high quality adults myself that way.
Hopefully I will see some other quality examples here.
Edit: I also need to isolate my pastel phenotype later this season before I retire her, but that means risking a few normals. At least they will be het albion and het Genetic stripe
I have a Banana Pastel Mystic that just sired my most recent clutch that has no freckles at all. I thought he was broken lol, he looked so pretty as a baby. I’ll have to get a picture of him when I get home beside his baby picture.
So when I first started breeding, one of the most frustrating things I saw was breeders breeding really horrible-looking adults and holding back babies from them even though they weren’t a very good example of their gene(s). So when I started buying animals for breeding, I got pictures of parents and only bought animals that came from high-expression, good quality animals. I also work with a lot of enhancing genes (fire complex, yb comblex, desert ghost) to help with how they look as adults, too. But I’ve got quite a few adults I’m really happy with.
First up are Pandora and Calathea, my banana piebald het clown and banana pinstripe clown. I inquired on about 9 banana pieds and decided on Pandora, and Calathea I found on a whim but was so impressed with her parents I decided to go ahead and get her.
Pandora is almost 2kg, and Calathea is almost 1500. Both girls still have really nice, bright and soft yellows that haven’t faded out and Pandora’s purples are still purple, not brown/tan.
I have a lace female named Hyacinth that is from one of the best examples of lace I’ve ever seen. All she is is lace yellowbelly, and I’ve seen plenty on MM that don’t look anywhere near as nice as she does at 1100g (so she’s still a subadult):
And for my desert ghost animals, I’m really proud of how they turned out as adults. My cornerstone male, Romeo, is a black pastel pastel desert ghost het amur (cryptic). He looked like this as a baby:
Another really nice adult example of desert ghost: Enya, my fire desert ghost. She’s so light and creamy and clean.
And, just good examples of genes in general: Autumn is a mojave (super) nanny, four years old, 1900g. She was bought as a super nanny but there’s been some contention as to if she’s a super (some people think the pattern should be more shattered, some folks think she’s definitely super). She is currently gravid and hopefully giving me eggs any day, so I’m hoping for some really nice quality nanny babies from her, as I’m very happy with her expression.
And then: simple. Simple genetics (good examples of them) are always amazing to have. Boreas is a GHI het pied, and he’s one of the best examples of single gene GHI that I’ve ever seen:
Anyway! I’ve got parent pictures for the vast majority of these guys and asked for parent photos for all of them. I have many, many times elected not to buy an animal if the parents weren’t up to my standard and like I said I get a bit of ■■■■ because of that, but I’d much rather end up with good quality animals in the long run than prevent someone being annoyed with me because I asked for parent pictures and then didn’t buy. I’ve also got all of my adult breeding animals up on my Morphmarket store, so you can see all of the adult breeding animals I currently have and what they look like.
The 2nd baby that your GHI produced is sooo beautiful!
The swirls in the pattern is so nice. What was the Dam’s genetics?
I want to get into producing GHIs. I’ve looked into a few combos and I really like Banana GHIs. Some have such a nice lavender color to them 
Yeah, mojo mom and super mojo sister (obviously) have absolutely no freckles.
She only has a couple and the orange pops because of the special and possibly fire.
BEL genes are great at keeping the spots down.
I’m expecting my banana cinny pied to get some neat freckles as he ages, but he’s so high white and smol right now. So he’s just my pretty boy.
Though honestly, my freckled like crazy banana het pied does still have some neat orange along her dorsal, just a lot of the browning as well. She’s just obviously not quite as well bred as my coral glows.
That said…
I also like to keep my lines as much as I could. Possibly because I originally started breeding leopard geckos and line bred traits are important to keep an eye on. So I will be keeping my coral glow and banana separately even though they’re ‘the same’.
When looking for another hypo male I specifically looked for a nice orange ghost line because of my BEL hypos being that line.
So I like looking for good quality animals and asking the lineage for them.
I have pictures!
Jango (Banana Mystic Pastel) August 2022
Jango today
Its so hard to get good photos of larger snakes 
Jango’s parents (they are not owned by me, they are owned by RedArrow)
One of Jango’s sons
The dam was a mojave yellowbelly with no known hets! She is awfully gorgeous as an 1800g adult too, though. That baby with the swirls is just GHI yellowbelly.
Just my opinion, but I think this Lesser pastel pinstripe yellow belly has turned out well.
(Same lesser pastel genetics that didnt get darker from the one in the opening post)
Beautiful golds.
Toasty butter 
