The Herp Hobby 2.0 is Coming … Many are not gonna like it.

There is some understandable terror rippling through the herp business these days. The reaction to my last post on the subject made me realize the fear has caused some to lash out, some to “see no evil” and some to ask legitimate questions. I want to take a stab at answering those legitimate questions here.

First a couple quick things. I take no joy in watching people suffer. I know we are heading into a very painful time for many in the business. I don’t wish financial or any other kind of harm on anyone. People get confused about this because I find it impossible to hide my excitement about the business reverting to the hobby. Im thrilled that we will once again see the hobby I knew in the 70s, 80s, 90s and very early 2000s. I realize that for the majority of folks the herp *business* is all they have ever known. The majority have never experienced the hobby when it wasn’t hyper-inflated. The fear of the unknown is understandable.

I’m also thrilled that the know-nothing show off “influencers” who have presented themselves as experts on youtube, etc will be fading away. I hope their demise is quick and I hope the pain they experience is directly proportional to the degree of the idiocy they exhibited. Sorry, thats just me.

As we watch this slow motion disintegration of the herp business a number of good questions have come up. First though, lets dispel any mythical wishful thinking that the “market is in a slump” or that this is a “cyclical correction”. This is whistling past the graveyard. It doesn’t even resemble reality. Inflation is down, unemployment is down, consumer confidence is up. Markets don’t decay away in these economic conditions unless there is rot at the core.

This hyper-inflated herp market was built on lies and greed and speculation. It has been a classical pyramid scheme, and it is collapsing as pyramid schemes always do. If you arent sure exactly how pyramid schemes work, do yourself a favor and look up the “Tulip Mania ” speculative bubble from the 17th century. That historical economic roller coaster ride will provide you with a road map telling the future of the herp business.

And second, let’s dispel the myth that I am predicting the end of the herp hobby. I’m not. There will always be the “hobby”: passionate keepers who have a fascination and respect for their animals, who provide top quality care, and who occasionally have a few offspring to sell to others. And there will always be suppliers of related goods and feeders that profitably support the hobby. There will always be kids who talk their parents into buying them a snake, or lizard or frog from the pet store. And there will always be kids who drag their parents to the herp shows, although they will be vastly fewer and the smaller ones will eventually have merge with the aquarium, bird, and/or exotic pet shows in order achieve profitable attendance levels.

And, thank god, there will always be new, passionate keepers who enter into the hobby for the right reasons and who will remain a viable market for the surplus animals other hobbyists produce.

The valid questions that I have received include these: If we are seeing the collapse of the herp business, why are there still many sales? Why are some species still expensive? Why are we not seeing shows closing? And for that matter, how can anyone predict the “collapse” of the whole herp business?

Brief but important background: From my observations over the years, the ball python market started to accelerate about the year 2000, although slowly at first. I remember the moment I knew something had changed: the Tinley Park show in 2000. That was the first I had heard of people buying any herps because they could make money on them. It seems absurd now looking back on it. But 90+% of us herp hobbyists never considered making money off our animals. But on this day the owner of Prairieland Herps, who I was buying a pair of Russian rat snakes from, told me that everyone stops by his table to tell him how cool his snakes were, and then they go over and buy ball pythons.

This was surprising to me first because the ball pythons I had known up till then were ugly, tick infested, skinny, reluctant feeders, most of whom were destined to quickly die and that sold for $5.00 from the importers. I had a lot to learn.

Within a couple years the hobby became infested with “investors” who followed along greedily with the “get rich quick” schemes. The entire nature of the hobby changed as hobbyists were replaced with business roaches. Once beautiful, respected and fussed over animals became nothing more than livestock. Their care was continually minimalized until it was little more than the abysmal rack and tub systems that supported the speculative lunacy.

“Look how cheaply you can keep these guys!” the hucksters would exclaim. “Why, you can squeeze 100 snakes into a single rack that takes no more than 3×3 square foot! You can make a mint raising snakes in your closet!

And of course the idiocy spread to a few other species that could be abused with minimal care and unloaded on other naive business start-ups. It’s important to keep in mind that the important factor that drove this explosion was the investor – the speculator, the drooling business tycoon. NOT the hobbyist.

These business geniuses had FAITH that the irrationally exuberant market would continue at least long enough to convince others to buy in – to get religion and spread the good word. This new religion had its well known prophets, had its disciples, and had its ardent followers. Thus the pyramid scheme was born!

Its important to understand this point. The herp boom rode on *faith* not market fundamentals. And just like the crisis of confidence that motivated runs on banks that preceded the Great Depression, herp buyers have now lost that faith.

So the big questions: How low will the market go, and why hasn’t it already gone there? (I understand that the easiest way to look like a fool is to attempt to predict the future. But I have 50 years of experience so I have as much right to make a public fool of myself as any, and fewer inhibitions about doing so).

When markets crash they always dip below what is “normal”. The herp hobby wont be an exception to that rule. Certainly many, many animals will become worth less than nothing. Meaning they will have to be housed, fed and kept warm even when there is no prospect of selling them or their offspring at any price. And this will initiate a real tragedy of neglect, abandonment and release. A wave of abuse that will promote legal remedies all over the country. We’ll get the hobby we deserve in other words.

Again this doesn’t mean all sales will suddenly stop. Just that the business will become unprofitable – a waste of time and money. As I said elsewhere, 70% of the herp shows will close up shop. And those that remain will be selling a fraction of the animals and supplies they normally would. Mid sized breeders will vanish, big name breeders will too. Overhead will far outstrip income even when time isnt fairly calculated.

So the big questions many have now – and they are good ones: Why are we not seeing sales plummet across the board? Why are shows still open? Why are some species still expensive?

The simple answers are two: First, the market for herps is small and so can be manipulated by a small number of colluding producers and importers. Working behind the scenes, even a small number of people can work to create new, short lived bubbles, or work to fool the buying public that the market for some species is still strong.

If you look at the recent attempts to create speculative bubbles for rainbow boas or tokay geckos, for example, you can see this illegal activity well underway. Or if you look at the prices for western hog nose snakes you will see breeders trying to present the facade of a strong market in the absence of one. In short, prices for these species are sticky due to manipulation. But when the faith is lost, their prices will tumble fast and far. Hog nose snakes will be selling for less than half of what they are today by next New Years, as an example.

Another factor in the slow motion crash is that the bubble breeders are floundering around trying to get in on the bottom floor of the next big pyramid scheme. So they are creating minor support for whatever species is rumored to be the “next big thing”. Only there wont be any next big thing.

The reason why this collapse is slow moving is simple: there are no public indices of the collapse. No news headlines, no market graphs showing clear, steep declines. No on air analysts explaining whats happening. So there are many who just dont know. Many others who know but will not say because doing so will only hasten the collapse. And many others who will lie, hoping to fool someone – anyone – into freeing them from their growing financial burden.

My last post on this topic was shared with a few other groups and by a few other people. I encourage this because I appreciate the feedback. But what I saw was a lot of denial, a lot of anger, a lot of whistling past the graveyard. And a lot of misplaced anger toward me, the messenger. But I can guarantee you one thing: Even the loudest of my critics are feverishly unloading whatever they can, whenever they can and wherever they can.

No-one wants to be the fool left holding the bag.

The important thing to understand about a speculative bubble is that it runs on faith, not facts. And the masses have lost the faith. There is no way to get that back. Its gone for good.