# Why such a premium for albinism?



## Ramsey (Jul 23, 2017)

Trying to learn a bit more about the market on the hobby.

I get that "looks" sell in most markets in life and when picking out a pet appearance can be a big driver. However I see albino tortoises sell for 31x their normal counter parts and I don't get the math.

I was hoping to get some insight on to the justifications. 

I understand what albinism is and its physical appearances involved, but is that all the surcharge is for?

Why do albino sulcatas babies sell for $2500+ when regular hatchlings go for $50-$80 ?

Thanks!


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## Tom (Jul 23, 2017)

Supply and demand.

People want them and there are few to be had.


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## daniellenc (Jul 23, 2017)

Until the genes involved are out there the few who have them can charge a premium. I don't know about tort genes but in snakes this is common. Through line breeding an anomaly can be replicated but it takes years! That animal has to mature and breed, hets need to be held back and matured, then line bred back and mature, and so on. It can take a few generations of both line breeding, breeding out, and breeding hets to get genetically diverse stock expressing the phenotype. During that time you're talking years of holding and caring for extra animals just to find out IF the anomaly is even genetic.


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## Ramsey (Jul 23, 2017)

That's interesting. To each their own but the price seems excessive. I thought there might be more to it than just the visuals.

Thanks for the responses.


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## Alexio (Jul 24, 2017)

I would say it's largely a combination of the first two answers. Tom is right when he says prices are determined by supply and demand. 
It's hard to gauge what the demand for different albino tortoises is but it's much easier to look at the supply side. 
Just for some genetic fun ( in case others don't know) albinism is a recessive trait which means that you have to have genetic material on both sides of the parents. 
Now this does not necessarily means that they both have to be visual albino.
You can also have non visual or heterozygote. This would be a creature who has some genetic material of an albino but looks like a regular animal. 
It's very easy to know if your tortoise a visual albino but unless you know the pairing it can be come tricky. For example an albino x albino would give you all babies who were visual for albino. 
You could also do an albino x het albino( non visual). In this case you could expect that each egg in the clutch has a 50% of being albino. 
You can also pair two non visual albinos (hets) as well. In this scenario both tortoise look normal but both had one albino parent. This would give you a 25% chance per egg to be albino. 
So this is all well and good but why the price? 
In snake breeding you only need to wait about 3/4 years to get a female ball python from the egg to where she is laying eggs. Male ball pythons can breed as young a a year or two. 
This means that you can have two or three generations in the time it takes most tortoises to reach sexual reproductive age. It will vary greatly by species but I feel like no tortoises is laying viable clutches before the 6 year mark. 
So if you were able to start with one albino tortoise and one regular tortoise and you got them as hatchlings it would take you possibly 7-8 years before you were getting viable clutches. And these would all be non visual hets. So you would have to wait years to determine the babies then hope that you got a lot of the gender you needed to be hets. For this reason it could take 20-30 years to develop a successful albino breeding program. 
Like best case scenario would be a male albino to a normal female and you get 20 het babies and 15 are female. Now you can pair these babies back to the original father who was albino. Now each clutch would have a 50% chance of being albino. But you would have had to have started with a albino. This breaks into why you really only see albino sulcatas. This has largely to do with clutch sizes. Sulcatas have very large clutches so your per eggs odds are better because you have so many more eggs. Who have the change to either be her or be visual and the right gender. Most albino projects can trade their original ancestors to wild caught albinos who were paired to get her. Since being large and very white would be different from all other tortoises in the same area I imagine albino tortoises don't survive too long in the wild as the are basically robbed of the natural color and camoflage they are given. 
So most of the cost really comes from being so little supply they are considering rare. But this used to be the same with ball pythons where albinos were selling for 1000+ now they barely sell for 200. I wouldn't be surprised to see the price of albino tortoises drop as more people try to breed them for profit and fun.


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## ZEROPILOT (Jul 24, 2017)

Albino fishes of certain species used to demand a lot of money. But so many were bred that now an albino, say Tiger Oscar can be had for little more that a standard.
If the market stays strong for albino tortoises, the prices will plummet once there have been enough for sale out there.


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## jakskillz (Aug 24, 2017)

At the last reptile show they were selling an adult breeding trio of sulcatas. One albino male and two het females. The asking price was $40,000 and like others said it's about demand. I remember years ago when someone posted an albino snapping turtle on the kingsnake classifieds and it's price was insane. There were no others on the market and last week I just saw probably 50 for sale at $400-600 depending on size so clearly someone has been producing them. If something takes a long time to get to the reproductive age like turtles then the people with the patience to wait and breed select morphs are very limited.


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