Good cheap sticks in 2025?

Hey y'all. Not a newbie by any stretch... but definitely a depressed drummer of 35 years.

I feel like there has been a trend with instruments and elsewhere in consumer goods, where the 'cheap chinese' stereotype has been falling apart- and some mass produced goods are actually becoming, in some cases, cheap AND good. I feel like the youtuber project farm seems to prove this on the regular.

It seems insane to me that even when buying a brick, it's getting hard to get the price per stick under 10 bucks. I feel like I perhaps bought a brick of Vic 7a's only a few years ago where the price was at about 6 or 7 a pair.

I rolled the dice and picked the silliest sounding name on amazon, and tried a brick of 7a's for 16 bucks. What I got were essentially a 5b that had been milled down at the shaft but NOT the neck or tip. They were completely unfinished, and so soft you could bend them in your hands. After five minutes of relatively hard singles and doubles, I had a pair of bananas.

So now I am just fucking depressed.

So has anyone found anything good? I like 7a's and 5a's. Happy with Vater fusions and manhattans. At this point I am happy to try something else. But nothing too chunky as I play fusion, afro cuban and jazz mainly.

Please tell me someone found something clever. Thanks