I've never checked the price on big pkts of unusual tomatoes. I'm still trying out pretty ordinary varieties . I get only OP varieties ... except for Sungold F1. I suppose they're still heirlooms even if they are popular, widespread, and commercially propagated.
Whenever possible I get a big pkt instead of a small one. The cost difference is small for common varieties if you shop around, but you get 5-10-20 times as many seeds. Then I can trade around for small pkts of MANY varieties.
Heather has run a Fall tomato-and-pepper swap for the last severqal years. You can send in 40 pkts and get back 40 pkts - so now I have a collection of more than 50 kinds of tomatoes, which is at least 30 more than I'll need for the next many years. But I like looking them up and taking notes. I focused on extra-early and cold-tolerant varieties (including cherry tomatoes) for two years. Now I'm checking out determinate, smaller, grow-in-bucket varieties.
But my space is so small I can only try a few per year, and that assumes I have time to start, pot up and baby them right when they need it, and not "when I get around to it".
And when under-50F nights last well into June and then return in August, I see more green marbles than ripe fruits!
