Yeah, that's one of the reasons I really like hot-swap keyboards. But you're 100% correct. It's hard to test so many switches when ordering a batch can be easily $40+ USD.

I've found with my moonlander I can get by with swapping about 10 keys on one side and using it for a few days as my test, but then I'm stuck with 10 keys that I might not like.

Luckily I recently got one of my friends into mech keyboards and we have similar but different tastes so he tends to like the keys I pass on, so I just sell them to him at cost if he likes them!

Might check around and see if there's a local keyboard meetup in your area (or close enough for travel) to see if you can borrow some switches to try or sell your unwanted switches.