Once, or twice, a year, Costco has a deal on Prime beef vacpacks. Usually, it is advertised as $25 off per package. In the midwest, this averaged to less than six bucks a pound for NYStrips, which, in my opinion was amazing, both in price and quality.
In the Charlotte metro area, it is is around eight fifty a pound, which compared to the competition (Harris Teeter, Publix, Food Lion) isn’t bad.
In my experience, the quality of the beef, although graded equally, wasn’t as good in Charlotte. Let’s chalk that up to the environment and assume that both are equal. Even at $8.50/lb, this is good for me. The only catch - you have to carve it yourself. This means that you have to know how to carve it, and what muscle/fat to remove before cutting it into steaks.
I generally buy two vacpacs per year from Costco. I’ve forgotten the average price per pound pre-carving, but it’s down to about $9.00 per 2" NYS (Charlotte prices). Although not great, it’s acceptable, which is what I presume is Costco’s aim. To me, their mid-west beef is FAR uperior in price and superior in quality.
Again, the only gotcha is carving it yourself. If you haven’t done it before, youtube is your friend … your very good friend.
And if you vacuum pack them after carving as I do, they’re good for at least 9 months in a manual defrost freezer.