Owned a plant store up for a few years (closed earlier this year). One of the primary growers of "rare" plants in the US was Costa Farms out of Florida. For instance, the it plant for awhile was a Thai Constellation - the prices for a 4" were often north of $300+. Wholesale maybe $150ish. At some point Costa realized they couldn't grow them reliably (from seed) and flooded the market with their plants. You can now find decent 6" plants for cheaper than what the 4" was.

Similarly Pink Princesses started flooding Lowe's, Home Depot, etc. I get the idea of having your bucket list plants and wanting to get them at cheap prices if at all possible. Often, those from HD, etc. were not cared for properly and many had bugs and/or root rot and wouldn't last long.

The whole plant market for house plants was interesting.

Regionally things in CA were easy to get, but hard in OR/WA. The reverse was also true.

It was a fun business while it lasted for us, aside from the annoyance of reading FB groups where people obsessed about the lowest possible price - etc... We finally closed up shop mainly due to life being busy with higher priorities and finding reliable help (even paying well above minimum wage) was next to impossible.