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The question is often asked:  Why are Savannahs so expensive?  The answer is that the Savannah's price is determined by supply and demand.  The demand is great and the supply is very limited.   The reason for this is that most breeds of domestic cats are easily breed and produce kittens abundantly.  The Savannah cat is a breed under development and unlike with other breeds is generally not produced by breeding Savannah cats to Savannah cats.  The Savannah cats are a hybrid breed started by breeding a domestic cat to an African Serval cat.  This is not as easy as it sounds.  The African Serval male to be used must be raised with domestic cats and it is ideal if these African Serval cats used for this never see other African Serval cats.  With a little luck, an African Serval male raised with domestic queens will breed them, but he may not.  The litters produced by these breedings usually have only one kitten that may survive.  With a lot of luck the kitten produced may be able to feed from the mother, but since the serval cat kittens normally remain in the mother for typically 10 days longer then the domestic cat mother, the kitten produced from this breeding will be premature and may need to be placed in an incubator with around the clock feedings given by humans.  Sometimes these kittens can be returned to the mother after a few hours and can survive with her.   It is hard to find an f1 female because the breeder will often keep the kitten for their savannah breeding program.  The male f1 is sterile and is of no value to a breeder for producing Savannahs, but there are so few of them that their price is in the thousands.  The f1 Savannah is legal in almost all states and requires no special permits.  Serval kittens are a lot more reasonable in price -- again because of supply and demand.  The typical price of a Serval male kitten is $2000  and the female kitten is more, add another $350 for shipping related expenses.     The f1 male savannah is worth so much because that kitten is legal in most states as a pet and no permit is needed, while the serval is restricted.  In our state of Arizona, permits are never issued for pet servals -- although in most states people can have servals as pets and often do not need a permit to do so.  Typically, after the first breeding, if you breed 4 more generations to domestic cats (down breeding) or you breed 4 more generations to Serval cats (up breeding), then the male offspring can reproduce, but none of the males in these f1, f2, f3  and f4 generations can reproduce.  The f5 generation male can, and he is either 15/16 serval or 15/16 domestic cat.  That's only 3% serval in the down breed line, or 3% domestic cat in the up breed line.  The problem with this is the up breed cat looks just like a serval and the down breed cat likes like a domestic cat.  Hopefully, a combination of up breeding mixed with down breeding may one day produce Savannahs with a higher percent of serval in them.  When the day comes that good looking Savannahs can be created by breeding Savannahs to Savannah, the price will drastically drop and these kittens may be as reasonable in price as an Ocicat or Bengal kitten.  This may take another 20 years.