I have only bought one lot of malted barley and wheat. I bought mine from The Malt Miller in Swindon. they mill the malt to order so it is probably the freshest you can buy, I would wonder how long the makt has been sat on the shelf, obviously check the dates etc. The malt miller is around £1.50 ish per kg ofmalt, so £3 for something sat on a shelf degrading in the daylight is quite a lot, obviously if you have to add postage that puts the price up a bit, but if you buy a good amount then it breaks the cost down a bit.
HTH.
Steve.