As time has gone on, recently. Some of the suppliers (UK, as recommended via official Raspberry PI PICO website links), which limited you to only buy a maximum of 1, and had run out of stock. Both had stock, again and increased the limit to 3.
So I've bought my first PICOs, they should be arriving soon.
At £3 + VAT (£3.60) each, plus £3 shipping (depending on which supplier, some offer free shipping, if order total is above a limit). It is not bad, for a reasonable spec'd development board(s), with decent quality, and which is well documented and supported.
Also, orderable to arrive within a day or so, rather than having to wait many weeks (potentially), if ordering from China.
I like the look of the Teensy 4.1, which has a much better specification, than the PICO. But at around £27 each (I sometimes seem to see them from around £20, upwards), it is arguably too expensive, to use in small Led flashing experiments/projects and all sorts of miscellaneous things, that need/want MCU capabilities.
It is difficult these days, to do much better than the £3.60/$4 a throw. Especially if you like/want the quick delivery, good documentation and build quality of it, compared to some of the cheap Chinese MCU development boards.
Although on paper (in theory), the cheap Chinese MCU development boards (such as the blue pills), look good. When you look at honest/detailed/accurate reviews. They seem to describe various technical difficulties, such as incorrect USB resistors, rather old cpu technology and peripheral sets, fake/clone cpus being used, which can cause incompatibilities, differences with documentation and other niggles.
Also, the USB connector, may NOT work as planned. E.g. It isn't ready to program the device (until you install a boot loader, which may need special debugging hardware connection things, although clone versions, are cheaply available on ebay, apparently), or NOT even act as a USB at all (except as a power connector).