- When you're shopping for reptiles,
you're gonna find a huge variety of prices
where even the same species might be available
for $30, $300, or even, like, $3,000,
depending on many different factors.
The sex, the age, the size, the morph,
even the temperament and personality in my case of selling.
So I thought I could bring an interesting perspective
and show the nine most expensive lizards I've ever sold
over the past few years through Emerald Scales.
Starting with number nine, a Subadult red iguana.
And this, you might actually recognize him.
It is Eddie or Edward, Eddie for short,
even though they're the same number of syllables.
He was in an unboxing video.
And here's the thing about iguanas.
Everyone wants to get rid of them and nobody wants them.
I have to be very careful taking in iguanas.
I only ever take in one at a time
and they can be really difficult.
They can be very angry, very defensive
because there's a lot of different care factors
that affect even their temperament
and calming one down is very difficult.
And they get extremely large.
And because not many people want them,
I don't want to get stuck with them.
But luckily Eddie was actually raised extremely well
and had a super chill temperament.
He was still a little intimidating,
and even he was not an adult size,
but luckily he was an iguana that I could actually make
a couple dollars on.
He sold for $240 plus shipping.
It took a while, but I found him a great owner.
Well, the great owner found him on the site
and then I agreed that it was a great owner.
When normally iguanas I have to get rid of them
for as cheap as possible and just focus on
making sure the home is good, but Eddie was cool
and he went for a little more.
And number eight.
It was a female Harlequin crested gecko.
Honestly, I don't know why this one went so much.
I have notes for each animal of what I want to mention.
For example, I forgot to say,
Eddie went to someone in Massachusetts in April, 2020.
The Harlequin crusty, the only note I have is,
I don't know why I sold this for so much.
Yeah, normally we sell crested geckos for a lot cheaper.
The average lizard that I sell is about 150, $200.
Sometimes they're even as cheap as $50 up to 100,
but there are of course gonna be incrementally,
more expensive ones.
I don't know why this one sold so much, but it did.
It was back in 2019.
So I don't specifically remember.
I mean, it was pretty, it was very healthy.
This one sold when we were working with some other people
who also kept the animals.
So if I basically maxed out my capacity,
I would redirect animals to one of these other people.
I don't do that anymore,
but I split the profits with these people.
So I didn't make as much,
but it sold for $280 plus shipping.
And it went to Pennsylvania in November of 2019.
A little more expensive, number seven.
Seven?
An adult male bearded dragon.
Normally beardies go for a lot cheaper.
On average I sell them for 150,
but a few things did stand out with this one.
Primarily his size.
He was huge.
We have had a lot of big bearded dragons,
but this one was over 20 inches long.
Yeah, I mean, he looks big.
Just look at his neck and his head.
He was just all around massive,
and people very rarely see those huge beardies
'cause normally when you're gonna be shopping for them,
maybe at a reptile show, or even a local pet store,
you're just gonna see these little tiny babies.
But I get the opportunity to work with a lot
of really big ones, and people like it.
He was also super colorful and pretty,
and one for $360 plus shipping.
He had a great temperament and a great attitude.
And you can see that that's a huge pattern with my selling.
The people buying from me oftentimes are not breeders
and simply want pets.
And so, yeah, they care about those little things.
Like, for example, I always tend to focus pictures
on their face and not so much their back,
like you might see on MorphMarket or something.
There's nothing wrong with that.
It's just the people that buy from Emerald Scales,
a lot of you oftentimes care more about how their face looks
and how their personality is.
So he kind of just had everything going for him.
He sold to someone in Colorado in January of 2020.
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Let's get back to the animals.
Number, I already lost track of the numbers.
Number six, was a male Blizzard Het Diablo Blanco
Leopard gecko.
You might've saw the bearded dragon
didn't even have any morphs linked.
It's oftentimes very hard to prove genetics,
especially if we just get a beardie from someone
and don't have much background.
But in the case of this one, we had the genetics,
we knew what it was, and it was fancy.
And he sold for $400 plus shipping.
Normally when we sell blizzard leopard geckos,
they're a lot cheaper, but this one had that Het trait,
meaning that he has the gene,
but he doesn't actively show the gene.
So if he's bred to the right female,
their baby might potentially show the gene
that he's kind of hiding,
in this case, the Diablo Blanco.
And so that just upped his price.
But also he has a really cool eye.
He has a partially eclipsed eye sort of.
And he just looks nice in the pictures.
He's super meaty, super beefy, and had a great appetite.
And people always like when they're gonna be easier
and they're not picky and stuff.
So not too bad, 400 hundy, plus shipping.
Next up, was a
Halmahera blue tongue skink
for $400 as well.
This one had something I'd never seen before.
I don't know if this is rare or not,
but it has literally green markings on the top lip.
It was literally just part of the coloring.
He even shed a couple of times while he was with us.
It was green.
It was just kind of cool.
This one sold to someone in Indiana in March, of 2020,
blue tongue skinks in general, go for a lot.
They're pretty difficult to breed.
I've never actually bred them, but from what I've heard,
they're a lot more difficult than other lizards
and animals in general.
So they do naturally go for more,
because fewer people are breeding them.
You can definitely find a lot of blue tongues available,
but a lot of them are still wild caught,
and they're gonna have issues,
and they're not gonna be adults.
And he was a lot bigger.
Wasn't the biggest blue tongue skink ever.
But, I mean,
he's bigger than like the babies you're gonna see
at a pet store that was just unboarded
from some other country.
So he stood out for that.
Next up,
we're working our way up on the price,
to this Tegu who was spoken to $460,
plus shipping, it's $50 flat rate shipping
if you didn't know.
And it was this juvenile red Tegu.
There's a handful of things that really affected
the interest and the price in him.
First off,
he was in a couple of videos which showed off something
that really stood out with him.
And that was his personality.
He had an extremely different,
extremely unique and super chill,
super happy and easy going personality.
And he literally looks happy in the pictures.
He looks cute.
And I mean, just in all the pictures,
he's like, he's almost like smiling.
You can tell he doesn't even care that he's being handled.
He was just kind of the dream Tegu for a handful of people.
And he got swooped up pretty quickly.
The other nice thing about that is I can be even pickier
when picking who he should go to
to make sure it's really a great home.
And he got this huge,
custom built,
it was like a room, like,
half the room was just converted to
this nice Tegu enclosure.
So I'm sure he's enjoying that.
He was in a couple of videos
and that always makes a difference as well.
He sold it in April, of 2020,
and it was shipped to Georgia.
Yeah.
People like those happy Tegus,
they can be kind of like Iguanas.
Where they're not always very well raised
and that can make them grumpy,
but he was just so healthy and it was really,
I think, his personality that sold him.
And on to number three,
we've passed to $500 mark, 500 plus shipping,
was this juvenile Northern blue tongue skink.
So oftentimes I don't actually sex the blue tongues,
because although you can definitely sex them,
I personally,
don't always feel confident trying to figure out
whether it's male or female,
because I just don't have much experience
doing that with skinks.
I do with other animals,
but skinks are not one of those.
And so I choose to just not mention it.
And that doesn't really matter to most people,
since they're not looking to breed the animals
on Emerald Scales and he still, he or she,
I have to say he went for $500 still.
And mostly because he's a Northern blue tongue skink,
they're simply one of the most expensive to find,
and it's hard to find them captive, bred, and this healthy,
he was very tiny and he actually did not have that happy,
easy going personality.
He was super grumpy,
really did not like being handled.
And I mentioned it in the description.
I said,
he's feisty, has a "big attitude".
Just meaning he's defensive, basically.
But I did try to work with him while he was here.
And like I said, we believe a dedicated keeper,
can tame them down into a loving darling.
Actually, I don't know if I wrote that description.
That doesn't sound like something I would write,
but either way it definitely fit.
Other times people actually prefer animals,
that they do have to work with
and they do have to tame down.
I'll admit it, can be fun to have an animal
that's not instantly, just, all easy and simple,
but instead takes work and you see that progress.
And in number 2, it's actually right here.
Yeah, a blue tongue.
He needs to be bathed,
That's why he's over here,
'cause he kind of ran through his own droppings.
Oh, she, actually,
it was this adult, female,
caramel Northern blue tongue skink.
A little smelly, similar to the other one
because it's a Northern, but this one is an adult.
She just went for $650 plus shipping.
She sold a few days ago,
and I haven't actually verified the owner yet.
So maybe she'll go back on the site.
We'll see.
She's only a little bit more than the baby,
but this is pretty much in line with the prices,
simply because she's everything the last one was,
but she has a better attitude, and she's an adult.
She's consumed more resources,
she's eaten a lot more food,
and she's taken a lot more time and energy.
So it kind of appreciates her value in a way,
because more has been invested into her
as an animal as she's grown.
So we've only had her for like a couple months,
but she did a lot of growing
over the past few years basically.
And, like it says, she's easy to handle and everything.
It can be a little harder,
because we need someone with a really big,
and really nice enclosure,
but those people are still out there.
And so, it's on to number one.
The most expensive lizard that I've sold ever,
is a Leachianus gecko, for $900 plus shipping.
It was a GTA X NUU,
Anna, male Leachianus gecko.
I actually have a video,
on why I don't like Leachianus geckos.
And then he sold for, almost a thousand dollars.
I really don't know anything about their morphs.
I mean, I know their basic, like, care stuff.
I wasn't even the one caring for this Leachianus.
All I knew that he was pricey
and someone very quickly swooped him up for 900 bucks.
They get really big.
They're one of the biggest geckos species.
And they're a bit more difficult than other geckos,
not the hardest thing ever,
but a lot of people really like them.
However,
the thing about this one,
is it was actually a Patreon supporter that bought him.
Meaning, that they got 10% off.
Any Patreon member,
right now, I think, it's 15% off any Emerald Scales animal.
And 10%, that's like 90 bucks.
It's only $5 a month on Patreon.
So technically they could have just joined for five bucks,
get $85 off, and then leave.
But either way, a pretty decent sum.
I'm not complaining.
It sucked that the last owner had to get rid of it,
but it was a really great owner
and it was shipped all the way to California,
and I'm in North Carolina, in March, of 2020.
So most of these animals are sold in 2020.
And this was the most expensive.
Leachianus geckos are always expensive
and not many people breed them.
Not many people sell them.
And this one was already a bit larger,
definitely not full size,
but he already had started growing quite a bit.
And it's the only Leachianus gecko that I've ever had
on Emerald Scales.
And so those nine animals altogether,
total $4,150.
And that's a nice number to see,
because so many of the other animals are just total losses.
Every turtle I sell,
a lot of the snakes and lizards,
the amount of resources that go into them.
And a lot of them,
I just can't sell for profit
when it comes to certain turtles,
and others simply have very low demand
and it's hard to get basically anything out of them
and it's a lot more costly to actually care for them.
So in the end,
it all kind of evens out.
And as these occasional really expensive animals
that come in, that really help to save the day
when selling them, because without this revenue,
it would be a lot harder to help all the other animals.
So thanks so much, whether you support Emerald Scales
by buying an animal and you get one,
whether it's a cheap animal or not,
the goal is to always re-home them.
And I've never gotten stuck with an animal.
One of you have always come through
to set up a great enclosure
and get it a home,
sadly only within the USA right now, but still cool.
That's that.
Yeah, mostly blue tongue skinks,
just cause they're pretty pricey animals
and they're becoming more common.
So I'm sure as they keep becoming more common,
the prices will gradually lower,
kind of like with any thing,
More supply,
to match the demand.
That's kind of how it works.
And it's a pretty good, unique mix.
I think it's cool to see how
it's a crusty beardy leopard gecko.
It's kind of everything,
but there's definitely a lot of cheap animals
that come on the site as well.
And ultimately. the money is just there
to help offset all of those expenses.
Animals aren't necessarily more interesting just because
they're more expensive,
but I thought it would be cool to talk about.
So if you enjoyed it,
I can do the same with snakes or whatever,
but that'll be it.
Again, Skillshare.
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Thanks so much to them for sponsoring,
and continue helping me do projects
because I like doing projects
and it's thanks to your support.
So that's it for this video.
I'm Alex, and thanks for watching.