With the transition of the US economy over the last 20 years or so, from quality goods and services to puerile entertainment, shoddy objects and disgusting snacks, requiring massive advertising to sell to lazy simpletons, a lot of businesses catering to knowledgeable customers have closed.
This includes specialty nurseries who grow their own stock, rather than reselling whatever mislabeled wholesale crap arrives from the mega grower. How many family-owned nurseries are left in any metropolitan area?
Even the big-box stores have drastically reduced nursery stock over the last few years, to the few items that sell the most. The focus has switched from giving the customer what the customer wants, to providing the lowest-quality product or service that will entice the customer to turn over the money.
Orchid growing is expensive in terms of heating, cooling, water purification and finding / training / paying staff who know what they're doing. A lot of the remaining orchid nurseries don't have regular business hours, but are open by appointment. This is to reduce costs associated with a display area and sales staff.
Companies on the Internet, whose real business usually involves identity theft, often provide lots of stuff for no exchange of money. Customers have been trained to think everything should be free or cheap. Witness the numerous threads here started by people who were swindled on eBay because they thought they could get a bargain almost too good to be true. At local garden society silent auctions, I put minimum bids on plants I donate of $2 - $5 rather than the 25 cents most other people put. My plants sometimes don't sell, even though they are usually worth over $10, or otherwise unobtainable.
People in your area can probably point you to regional growers who would welcome a visit. But don't get them started on how is business.
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