I recently bought two organic Ugandan vanilla beans in a glass test tube from Whole Foods for $12, with the intention of making crème anglaise for the party. Never got around to the crème anglaise, but I did just discover that you can order a wide variety of vanilla beans online from Beanilla for much much less.
Not to mention that trader joes has vanilla beans fairly cheap-ish. Though you won’t get as much bean selection and I don’t think they’re organic.
Hmm, not sure I noticed them there, but I’ll have to keep my eyes open. We just happened to be shopping at Whole Foods for the Straus Dairy milk…