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TheWolfmanTom said:
All those morphs are non-exixtent here Tom as they are treated as a genetically deficient specimen thus most keepers here show no interest in them. Silkbacks are the poster child for border closures.
GGs as Brian said are "suspected" to be naturally occuring "yellow phase" dragons from the Northern Teritory region of Australia. There is a colaboration of breeders at the moment that i know of that have started a breeding program of "giants" (even by our standards) in South Australia. There has been no new news of this as it was met with a lot of scepticism by most purist keepers. Locality and specifics have been mentioned during the discussions but it is believed by most keepers and taxonomist that they are naturally occuring so nothing special. They were talking about vitticeps up to 27 inches long with heads up to 3 to 4 inches accross, but as of yet no real proof of this project has surfaced. I was actually at a petstore on Saturday that offers boarding for reptiles and i saw a BD that was 25 inches long with a head about 3 inches across (one of the biggest ones i have seen in a while).
The advancement of morphs here in OZ in BDs (or any other reptile) is not practiced as we work on localities, most of us are purist. Some breeders work on colours but that's the extent of what is deemed as "acceptable" in the hobby, even then they work on locality specific colouration. But like a said there is a growing trend of people looking for the colouration you guys have there as this is what the "newbies" want. Take for example if i was on the market for a red phase dragon and i saw one for sale the first question i would ask the seller is "what's the locality?" If you can not provide me this answer then the conversation ends there.
Beardies here command a very low price on the market, being considered a "beginner" reptile most people start of with them then move on. So unless you have a very "special dragon" by australian standards there's no market for them here. Even then you would be hard pressed for people to pay big $$$ for something so common. Breeders of BDs here do it for the love of it as there is just no money in it from a commercial point of view. The highest acceptable price you could ask for a highly coloured, locality specific specimen would be around the $150AUD to $200AUD and that's a suckers price for newbies for a juvie.
