Death by our Savior

[KORBIN5895]

This is prompted by a post I saw on Facebook today that was posted by a long time member on here.

They were talking about why the royal market is all over the place price wise. It is also something I have been thinking a lot about lately.

So many people proclaim that this recent and rapid influx into our hobby is a great thing. All these new people will buy from the breeders, they will educate the masses and they will also bolster our numbers and stop these ridiculous bans.

I am glad we have optimists left in this world but it's time to start listening to us realists.

A lot of these new people are entering the hobby for all of the wrong reasons. I can't begin to count the people that I have seen buy their first snake and with in weeks are purchasing there breeding groups. It is these types of people that crash the market. All they see ate dollar signs. They purchase whatever they can and throw them together thinking. " These will hatch and I'll have all of this e tea money......." What they fail to realize is that these babies don't all sell right away, let alone all survive. What tends to happen if they get a successful clutch they have a hard time selling the babies well below market price which then drops the market price.

Here is an example I had first hand experience with. I sold a guy a pair of bumble bees het hypo. His goal was to produce hypo super pastel spiders ( I haven't two sweet clues what the name will be) . He plans on selling these for $600-$800 "to move them fast"

The second problem I am seeing is that maybe 1 of 20 new keepers have any desire to actually listen and learn. Way to many new keepers are of the mindset that they have a snake and have all the answers because they read a car sheet once. I am sorry to burst you bubble but I do not want the ignorant educating the ignorant. There is a veery wise saying that says "When the blind lead the blind they all fall in the ditch." I can take you to a forum that is the epitome of this statement. I saw new members join with sick and dying animals and all of the members congratulate then on their new pet and tell them they were doing an amazing thing the way they took care of it.

Finally we need to just look back at the petition USARK put out during the lacy act. They were looking for a certain amount of signatures and they fell miserably short. These knew people are coming to fight the cause like those of us that have been in this for 10-15 years. Why not? They have no blood, sweat or tears in this. They have a couple hundred buck wrapped up in this from their pet store purchase past week. What do they really care about the hobby?

Believe it or not I am not against new people. What I am really disappointed in are those of us that have been around yet are not mentoring like we should. The real disconnect is the "old boys" mentality. Yes, I understand the vast majority of fresh blood won't ever amount to much. Yes these ignorant fools are annoying as hell. Yes, I wish we could ban people for being stupid. BUT what about the good ones we let slip through because we have stopped caring ? What about the ones that want to legitimately learn? That is where we are dropping the ball.