Victory Seed Company's seasonal tomato offers are beginning

[Shule]

These tomato varieties are only available for a week (until January 12th), if you're planning to get them (it's a long list):

https://victoryseeds.com/collections/seasonal-varieties

You'll have to wait until next January if you want them later.

I've grown some of these. Alpha Pink is one I would recommend for flavor (I only grew it once, though, but I want to try it again some day).

[Setec Astronomy]

I read their explanation of "How Our Seasonally Available Varieties Program Works", and it doesn't make any sense to me. They have them in the catalog (apparently) but you can only order them for 1 week out of the year? Then they say that it's too burdensome to keep them in stock year round, then they conclude by saying that they are excited to have this solution to keep them in stock. Seems like a gimmick to me.

[ddsack]

Could it be they are stored in a deep freezer situation to keep old seeds fresher and they don't want to go digging around in there all the time? It does seem a bit odd that even if they were kept separately from more widely requested varieties someone could not batch the orders and go find them once a week. Though I suppose that would hold up your whole order, if you had say, 10 current varieties, and only 1 of the oldies which held up mailing out the order for an extra week.

[bower]

I was reading through their offer last night. Very nice selection of interesting tomatoes.
Their explanation of the special offering makes perfect sense to me, and I take it at face value. If it helps them to maintain their stewardship work, vs having an extra 50 varieties listed on offer all the time, then I'm for it. These varieties are often passed over, so they say, in the glut of orders for new or more exciting tomatoes. We all have limited budgets, so while you might be excited to see something rare and historic like Chaulk's Early Jewel or Livingston's tomatoes, or unusual genetics like the grey leaf of Fioletovyi Kruglyi, or Lutescent Long Red, you might just feel comforted that they're being maintained by someone else, and you could get them if and when you want and whenever you have space... but your priority buy this season is whichever tomato everyone is raving about just now, and some of the duly famous and beloved heirlooms that are widely available but you haven't tried yet. So the material they are conserving rarely makes the top of your list (and we all know how these lists get sliced in half if you're paying packet price per variety).
By offering them for a special week, they are singling out the heritage they are conserving in spite of low commercial return. Purchases made this week are directly supporting their conservation effort, not just their seed selling business. This seems very legitimate to me, and would never dismiss it as a 'gimmick'.

[Setec Astronomy]

This seems very legitimate to me, and would never dismiss it as a 'gimmick'.

I understand your premise that they are trying to get people to focus these heirlooms in spite of popular distractions, but my interpretation of their explanation has nothing to do with that, to me they are talking about logistical/warehouse/inventory control concerns. I mean, maybe that's real, maybe they don't have room for 50 extra stock boxes on their shelves, so by only having them there for 1 week makes it feasible.

[Shule]

The way I see it, based on what they said (and my rationale, which in my mind is similar to what bower said, whether or not it sounds completely different), is they only have so much land to grow stuff on. Normally they might use a larger portion of that per variety, but for these, they're just using a small portion of land (to make more room for those that sell more), and because of that, they only have so many seeds of these varieties to sell. Only selling them for a week a year, though (vs. until they run out), I'm guessing that's an advertising tactic to get us more interested in the less-bought varieties (so people actually buy some of them, and so they're more excited about them next year than this year). Alternatively, they might expect to run out of a large portion of them quickly due to the small inventory, and they don't want to trouble us with a lot of pages of seeds that say, `out of stock`; I don't know if they're keeping them listed on the site in the off-season or not, though.

[Shule]

Oh. Looks like today's the last day.

[Whwoz]

Makes sense to limit time available if seed is deep frozen, order for one week, at end of week, one entry into deep freezer to extract required amount of seed and return balance with minimal freeze/thaw time. Would allow multiple years supply from one entry into freezer rather than having to grow plants every year or second year.

[Setec Astronomy]

Makes sense to limit time available if seed is deep frozen, order for one week, at end of week, one entry into deep freezer to extract required amount of seed and return balance with minimal freeze/thaw time. Would allow multiple years supply from one entry into freezer rather than having to grow plants every year or second year.

That's the most logical explanation I've heard so far.

[bower]

Yeah they also say that if you order other things, they will not be shipped until the end of the week.
So it certainly does sound like a trip to the freezer to fill all those orders on one day, minimal disturbance to the seeds.