Banana Ball Python or Coral Glow Ball Python

It was over ten years ago but I remember it like it happened last week. I walked into a local reptile importer / wholesaler because I had heard that they had a rare albino looking ball python that had just come in from Africa. When I walked into the office I saw what would later change the entire Ball Python market and thereby the entire Reptile industry. There it was, a scrawny, scarred and badly faded adult import ball python in a ten gallon tank with a screen lid. The price had started at ten thousand that morning and by the time it sold the price had climbed to twenty four thousand dollars, something unheard of at that time. That animal was what would later be called the Banana Ball Python and it would change our hobby and business permanently.

A second animal was brought in later and that animal was what became the Coral Glow Ball Python. What we didn’t know at the time was that for one the animal was a co-dominant genetic mutation and that it was also sex linked thereby making it the only Ball Python morph that has male makers and female makers within the same mutation. It took years and multiple breedings till this riddle was solved and as it happened and Male Coral Glow and Banana Ball Pythons were produced everything began to change.

Banana Ball Python for Sale

At first people were expecting to pay twenty to twenty five thousand dollars for males but this price quickly rose to forty five and fifty thousand dollars per male. This action quickly ate up the top tier investment money for Ball Python Morphs that year. The next year a single male Banana Ball Python for sale was going for twenty five thousand and although the price had fallen in half the production had increased by a tenfold and this quickly sucked up all the second tier Ball python investment money and put it in the hands of less than five people. Those five people then put the money into other ventures and as the price of Banana Balls and Coral Glow Ball Pythons came down in the following years their sheer beauty and desirability brought down the price of other morphs and combos. After all, why would you buy a multigene ball python mutation when you could have a Banana ball instead?

This year as the damage has been done and the dust settles the few players in the game that are making more than a couple hundred Coral Glow and Banana Ball Pythons are the people that are going to pull through this price shift and market upheaval and see the other side. At this very moment some of the most expensive Ball Python morphs are the Banana Pied and Banana Clown Balls. So I ask you what do you prefer, a Banana Ball or a Coral Glow Ball Python?