True- it doesn't seem like the kind of tea many people tend to casually drink infrequently- people seem to either get very into it, or maybe they try it once or twice as a novelty and decide 'its kinda like shu' and thats the end of it before they find how varied of a tea it can really be. I don't know if its just that my knowledge of where to get it grew, but I really feel like when I first started getting into it there weren't so many western facing vendors that had it, or at least not particularly good examples of it at prices that weren't intimidating for a tea you knew nothing about. Recently it seems like the options have expanded in a big way, both a lot more bad/meh examples but also a much greater availability of better processing and storage.
I just got the same samples as you @Andrew S... had a look at the leaf and thats it so far - very curious to try them out but waiting for the right moment. I'm thinking I actually might want to try these out in heavy porcelain to avoid losing or muting the character of them.
After a miserable sleep week and wanting to avoid caffeine I opted for some Three Cranes liu bao stems yesterday afternoon, which looked like stuffing a birds nest into a pot. There were a few bits of leaf mixed in that probably would be considered yellow, and the stems I'm guessing are the result of someone having separated out a large basket to make a higher grade/price tea. The wet storage character was really nice, expected petrichor type notes but also something really fresh, almost like green peas. It went for quite a few rounds and was surprisingly thick for a tea with almost zero leaves. I've had actual liu bao that gives out quicker than these stems did.