Toes first: the grip test tells you the most
A crested gecko's toes are its climbing equipment, covered in microscopic hairs that let it stick to leaves and glass, so their condition predicts how well it will use its enclosure. Start by letting the gecko walk across your hand and onto a smooth surface: the toe pads should grip with obvious stick, spreading flat and releasing cleanly. Then look at each toe in good light, all twenty of them. You are checking for rings of pale, retained shed skin wrapped around the base or middle of a toe. Stuck shed acts like a tightening band as the gecko grows, cutting circulation until the tip beyond it dies and drops off — a common, preventable injury that sellers sometimes dismiss as nothing. Missing toe tips, swollen toes, or toes bent at odd angles all deserve a direct question to the seller about how they happened.
Why shed on the toes is a husbandry report card
Retained shed is rarely about the gecko; it is about the humidity and surfaces in the enclosure it has been living in. A baby raised with proper misting cycles, rough bark and foliage to rub against, and humidity that rises and falls through the day sheds cleanly, toes included. A gecko arriving with stuck shed on several toes is showing you that its early environment ran too dry or too bare — which does not make it a bad purchase, but it does mean you should expect to provide warm, humid soaks and careful help with the remaining shed, and it tells you to look harder at everything else. Ask the seller how the babies are misted and housed. Confident, specific answers about humidity routines are reassuring; surprise at the question is not.
The tail: what normal looks like, and what a missing one means
Run a gentle eye along the tail from base to tip. It should hang smooth and full, without kinks, sharp bends or a wavy, rippled outline when the gecko is resting. Kinking at the base or a tail that flops and folds oddly can be early evidence of calcium imbalance affecting the bones, especially in a fast-growing juvenile, and it is a fair reason to choose a different gecko or ask for a vet check before paying. Then there is the famous exception: crested geckos can drop their tails when startled, the tail never regrows, and the adult is left with a rounded, frog-like rear end. A tailless gecko is not damaged goods — it eats, climbs and breeds normally — but it should be priced as tailless, and the dropped tail tells you the animal has had at least one serious fright in its life.
Putting the checks together before you commit
Finish with the quick whole-animal scan that ties the story up: clear, bright eyes without stuck shed caps; a jaw that closes in a straight line rather than feeling soft or misaligned, which again points to calcium; a vent area clean rather than crusted; and movement that is purposeful, with the gecko able to jump and land. Ask what the gecko has been eating — which powdered diet, whether live insects are offered — and whether it feeds keenly, because a gecko whose toes and tail look right but which has never eaten well is still a worry. Record exactly what you found, good and bad, in a KinsLe Pet Passport on day one, and that dated baseline becomes the comparison point for every shed, weight and vet visit that follows.