Funny you should ask just this minute....I am cleaning out my spice cabinet....and discover I have 3 bottles of vanilla beans...2 marked $1.50 I know I bought when the grocery store built a new store and moved and sold lots and lots of stuff very cheap.
So I don't know how much they are usually.
But I have 6 (count 'em! SIX!!) bottles of pure vanilla extract, 3 little containers of saffron, 3 of Coleman's mustard, 3 kinds of Penzey's cinnamon and a jar of "ordinary cinnamon" to use when I want to scent some boiling water and apple skins for potpourri, 2 little containers of cream of tartar ( does it go bad?) a jar of meat tenderizer which I only use for insect stings....and a jar of colored sugar in every color known!!
Sorry....but I digress!!
Linda C

I don't buy them here. I order them. The price has zoomed in the last year or so. Can't remember the reason but something about a problem growing them so they're scarcer & so cost more.

Last time I ordered 1/4 pound of beans from this company on ebay. (They have a regular website also.) They're the best beans I've ever purchased, worlds better than what comes in jars at the store or from Penzeys and much cheaper in bulk. They're also so fresh and moist I can use less.

I divided the beans into packets of two or three then vacuum-sealed with my FoodSaver. So far they're keeping beautifully.

Carol

Here is a link that might be useful: Organic Bulk Vanilla Beans

"a jar of colored sugar in every color known!!" LindaC, you are sooo much like me here -- LOL. I dont' have the colored sugar, but I found 7 or 8 pkgs of plastic wrap and about the same number of plastic bags (or more) in the back of a closet recently. I remembered putting them there when I got them on sale and, apparently, went into Sr. Moments personified immiately afterward.

Carol, thanks so much for that site. Funny, I had never thought of looking on the Internet for vanilla beans. Silly me!