Should breeders charge more for pos hets?

I was thinking about this and I wanted your opinions. Should sellers charge more for pos hets or not? I see both pros and cons to it. I think that breeders working with valuable morphs (eg. monarch, rainbow, monsoon) producing lots of pos hets (like breeding a het to a het) should charge more because it doesn’t seem fair to the breeder (especially small ones who made a large financial sacrifice to work with the gene) to sell a snake that has a 50/66% chance of being a $500-1000 snake for $50. Also, the buyer chose to take that risk and gamble with it proving out or not, so holding the breeder responsible for that doesn’t make sense.
A small breeder might put a lot of money into a ph and years into raising it up, breeding it, and then raising and breeding the babies, just to have it not prove out, be out a lot of money, and have tons of normals to deal with. Or maybe it does prove out and now they have thousands of dollars worth of valuable snakes. Do you think the price of pos hets should be increased, very slightly increased, or at the same price as normals (or any other genes in the snake). Hopefully we have a good discussion about this. I also added a poll to get a rough idea of what people think.

  • They should be priced higher.
  • It depends but they should usually be priced higher.
  • It completely depends on the circumstances.
  • It depends but they should usually be priced the same.
  • They should be priced the same.

0 voters

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I suppose you could look at it like selling a horse or other animal with a champion bloodline. Not all offspring end up being race horses for example but because they carry the genetics of a champion they are worth much more.

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I agree that there should be an increase in price due to there being pos hets. I will say some pos hets should be worth more then others, like het Albino vs het sterling. If they both are in equal combos; say Anery and Jungle. You are looking at two wonderful boas but one is and should be worth more based in the fact that Sterling is less spread the Albino, so the availability of them in combos should be held in higher hopes. It does raise the question if the price increase should apply to all possible hets. I don’t think it should unless it is a het in a big gene combo or very unspread het.

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The standard in the hobby for as long as I can remember has had possible hets priced either slightly higher, up to significantly higher than normal.

It imo is a no brainer to price them higher than a normal. Of course this is comparing apples to apples. In instances where a non het animal is higher quality it will be worthy of a better price point over a run of the mill looking het or possible het.

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Imo possible hets are only worth as much as the breeder they come from. They are for sure worth more but only if the source your getting them from is honest and reliable. There are plenty of instances of breeders being less than honest about what they are selling.

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I agree that this is especially important. Anybody can say that they did a pairing of mojave x “het clown”. It could easily add $25-50 per hatchling and nobody would ever know.

Edit: Even reliable sources can’t always be trusted. Back when pied was new and expensive people invested lots into pos hets, the sellers weren’t always honest. Everybody knows that some breeders claimed to be able to identify the true hets (and with only a single gene at play they likely could). This isn’t very honest since a 50% pos het is less likely to prove out since the breeder didn’t think it would prove out. Some people might say this is business, others might say it’s false advertising or taking advantage. No matter what source it is you can never be 100% sure that it’s actually a fair pos het.

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Yes, indeed. When a trait is newly discovered and animals who are visual New Whatevers are few, definite hets command high prices. Possible hets for New Whatever are worth much more than are possible hets for common traits. This holds true for me as both a buyer and a seller.

This is a good point. It’s not necessary that someone be a big name breeder for me to believe them, though. People with smaller collections sometimes have just a few high dollar animals, and thus may have those high dollar p/hets. That said, if someone’s advertising a premium prices p/het and the someone can’t back it up when questioned, they’re not going to get my business.

Most of us either have had or will have the experience of buying a p/het that doesn’t prove out. Of course that’s disappointing, but if we keep at it long enough, we’ll likely also have the much happier experience of a surprise hidden het appearing in our projects.

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I personally don’t increase for pos het… I don’t work with super expensive recessives like monsoon… only clown, toffee, gstrip, pied, hypo. I make sure that they are labeled with the percentage but if it’s a project I’m working on I’m not likely to sell most of my poss hets either. I also really try to avoid poss hets when possible. By

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Yes, I believe they should be worth more, but not as much as if the snake were to actively display the traits. They could be very valuable as future breeders, but not so much as a super flashy snake. I would increase the price a bit, but only on the higher end of the spectrum of what traits it actively displays or confirmed hets.

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I don’t think any breeder worth their salt is going to ditch Poss. Het. Sunset or similar for the same price as a normal.
I could see this with poss het Albino/Hypo/Pied or maybe even Clown but not much more 'cutting-edge reccesives or double/triple poss. het.
Possible Hets. should be priced representative of their potential. As a buyer you can make significant savings taking the chance, as a breeder you are helping the economic stability of the hobby by not low balling what may be very rare genes.

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Is having hets like playing craps? You may hit your point or you can crap out right? So if it takes 2 copies of that het to visualize, then there is no real way to be certain what you are buying is what you are claiming. I already would have to buy 2 animals with claims of het, but since you cannot be certain i have it. Its gambling and hoping it pays out, but the house always wins in the end.

So what you are saying is i should fork over hundreds of extra dollars on a slug? That may not even give me a payout?

Im sure i paid extra for the het Picasso @1500.00 but i really bought it for the visual Albino/Matrix

Im not sure about charging people extra for a crap shoot is the right thing to do. If i wanted to possibly make a Picasso id have to spend like 3k at least with 0 guarantee of even getting a Picasso, or i could already spend way less and get a visual Picasso already that will pass on the gene. Doesn’t betting on the sure thing end up with better results and cheaper?

Im probably not fully understanding the genes thing but to me paying extra for a chance seems to risky. Not to mention you wind up with animals you don’t want, that didn’t pan out and you would have no idea which was the slug or if both were, so strictly talking investment in i can’t see it, when i can already get it expressed for less money.

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Not if they are 100% hets. The possible hets are the crap shoot and really shouldn’t be charged extra for. But 100% hets are totally going to be charged for since it’s a guarantee they carry the gene. So not all hets a re a crap shoot.

That being said the ONLY way to guarantee you hatch visuals is to pair two visuals. You can pair two 100% hets or even a visual to a het and still have bad enouck to not have visuals

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So you kinda take a chance regardless? So not every offspring carries on genes?

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Visual x visual paring = all visual babies
Visual x het pairing = hopefully visual babies and 100% het for those not visible
Visual x non het= all 100% het babies
Het to het pairing = hopefully visual babies with any non visual being 66% poss het (once proven they become 100% het)
Het to non het= 50% het babies that would be 100% het once proven

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To be honest I don’t buy pos hets even from breeders that I would otherwise trust (unless I’m buying them for whatever visual look they might have and the hets are just a fun bonus); I have limited space and would prefer to have room for the animals that I produce/other projects vs. taking a chance on an animal, or a pair of animals, that may not even have the genes I’m after. Having said that though, if I were to sell a pos. het and could prove that —> ‘this is the pair they came from’, than I might price them at whatever genes they visually carry + a tiny bit extra.

Edit: ^^^ Depends on the het. though, as others have said. If it’s a recessive that has a lot of visuals & 100% het.s available in the market already than I doubt I’d even bother adding extra and just make mention that ‘hey, this is what produced it, might be het.’

I’m not really in any hurry to sell animals though so I’d more than likely just hang onto them and possibly try to prove out what’s a het and what’s not and go from there.

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I don’t charge more for poss hets, but I do disclose it. I don’t like surprises when I’m trying for something specific and it has happened. I was pairing a dh pied albino to one albino female and a pied female to prove him out… turns out my pied female was het albino and I never had any indication… it’s a shocker to see an albino animal you weren’t expecting be the first to pip.

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Yes disclosure wherever possible is nice to know, plus what if you accidentally combine 2 genes that may be a death sentence or have some kind of deformity to offspring knowing what you have would help avoid any problems like that.

I almost feel like some of this is is just guesswork if you are unable to see a specific gene manifest you really don’t know if they really have it. I have seen where they are just getting genetic testing ( not sure how accurate and reliable it is) i also noted it so far only has limited amount of Species like BP, but since there is so many BP it would be natural to assume they would start there. I don’t think ill see Rosy genetic testing at least not for a long time.

Do all the same genes show the same pattern? Like i see lots of people asking whats this BP, can you identify. So if i saw a clown just throw out a name, they would always have the same features? Is there ever instances where something is anomalous so it may be more difficult to tell? Im assuming theres got to be some feature that is consistent overall but more or less are yall just giving a best guess id like given XYZ then = do visual tests fail? It seems like only true genetic testing can reveal whats actually there, i could be 100% wrong too.

That I know of there are no recessive genes that can cause those kinds of issues. All issues I’m aware of are from mixing incomplete dom genes.

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It’s not just guesswork. And with a reputable breeder, you DO know what you’re getting if an animal is advertised as 100% het for something. For instance, with my corns, I bred a Caramel Ghost Stripe to an Amel Stripe het Anery, Caramel. I can say with 100% certainty that every baby is a visual Stripe. Every baby is also either visual or 100% het for Albiino, Anery, Caramel, and Hypo because one parent was homozygous for each of those traits. That means each baby has at least one copy of each of those. Guaranteed. (Being homozygous for Caramel and/or Anery is also possible in the illustrated breeding since both parents have those alleles. )

This isn’t a ■■■■ shoot. It’s scientific certainty. Does being 100% het for a recessive trait, i. e. Caramel, guarantee that offspring will carry/show the trait? No. There’s a 50/50 chance that each offspring will inherit the Caramel allele. If the chosen mate is a visual Caramel, every baby has a 50/50 shot at being visual. It’s mathematically possible to have a clutch full of babies who don’t express the trait but odds are that about half the clutch will show the desired trait if the animal is guaranteed het X visual.

Possible hets are about odds of having an allele. I think the terminology MorphMarket uses like “50% het Caramel” can be confusing. It means "“50% chance of being het for Caramel (or whatever).” Am animal can’t really be 50% het. It’s either het or not, the terminology is a shortened way of giving odds on whether or not an animal carries the trait.

Hope that offers a little clarity.

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