Hi,

I wanted to ask if you think the tarantula hobby is going the same way as the reptile hobby?

I am all about stuctures because they work. For many years the reptile hobby had a structure - you had the private breeders who supplied the shops and the buyer would buy from the shops. This structure worked - prices remained high, everyone got a piece of the pie.

Then a few years ago, some people which I will not mention thought they would cut out the shops and go straight to the customer. Short story even shorter, by thinking they would get more money cutting out the shop, more and more private breeders had stock which they couldn't move and literally over night the whole reptile hobby fell...snakes that were imported for R15000 a snake, couldn't be sold for R1500 the following breeding season.

I like the approach they have in the US - at a show, if the price for albino boas is $1000 then everyone sells at that price (generally) so essentially what you are buying then is service and quality.

Unfortunately, this isn't applied at the expos here - it is a very cut throat setup - I dont believe money is made at them by the breeder.

I see baby boas being sold for R250 ...that breeder cant be making a profit.

I see many people giving bearded dragons away, simply because they become to expensive to feed when you have hundreds of them.

lesson learnt - they should have kept the structure in place.

Anyway, many people thought they could make a quite buck by breeding reptiles but it isn't as simple as it seems.

I see more and more people selling off their tarantula collections (even on this forum) and I am wondering if the same phenomenon is happening in this hobby?

your thoughts?

well i am new to the hobby but i THINK that it is that way but i am not sure.

Yes, the hobby is definately headed that way. Not so sure its a bad thing though. Because most tarantulas are pretty hard to breed, and most imports have been stopped, it will be a while before all tarantulas are commonly available. When you said everybody got a piece of the pie, it was only the breeders and petshops who got to eat. The everyday guy on the street would have to suffer with high prices that i feel were over the top. As an example, i saw a petshop the other day selling P.ornata's for R600 per sling. Think they were selling on the site for R100 each.
In the long run, petshops will probably suffer the most, but the hobby will be much more widespread because everyone can afford to keep tarantulas.

The SA market is to small to accomidate the growing number of reptiles being bred every year resulting in people having to sell off at a lower price.Petshops cannot absorb all this stock so public selling is the only way to get rid off the unwanted

Anybody with internet access is capable of dowloading the secrets of breeding eg: incubator building thereby making the average joe a breeder as well.

The tarantula market is growing and as a result more people will breed ... probably resulting in a similar situation.

+1 Mammon

It's a peculiar phenomenon in the market that some people are attracted mostly to rare and/or expensive species. The moment the prices drop and availability increases, they turn to other species.

This is part of what keeps the exotics hobby going.