So far I've felt too guilty to even try to request free samples.
I just looked at the MAX7221, which in single quantities is over ten bucks. Plus the shipping. Yow. On the one hand, that's the difference between affordability and not, for small projects. On the other hand, that's an even bigger "how do they think they get more profit out of me by giving it away" guilt.
I want SparkFun, etc., to source a few thousand of these matrix driver packages (significantly less than $5 in quantity), so they can reduce the single-quantity pricing!