Saving money on test kits
Everybody loves a sale — and genealogists particularly love sales on DNA kits.
And the fall sale season is underway for DNA test kits just about everywhere.
The sale that ends the soonest is the Halloween sale launched by MyHeritage DNA — that sale ends today — taking the usual price of its Ancestry test kit from $79 down to $49 and the price of its Health+Ancestry kit down from $199 to 99. Ordering two or more kits, you’ll also get free shipping.
November 27th is the end date for the sale at AncestryDNA. The regular ancestry kit is on sale for $59, down from the usual $99. Its new Health+Ancestry kit is not on sale, and holds its usual price of $149. Note that the Health+Ancestry kit is not available to residents of New York, New Jersey or Rhode Island.
The end date is November 28th for the Family Tree DNA sale. The Family Finder autosomal DNA test is on sale for $59, down from its usual $79, and there are discounts on both YDNA tests and mitochondrial DNA tests as well. For YDNA, the Y-37 test is sale priced at $99 (down from $169), the Y-111 at $199 (down from $359) and the Big-Y at $399 (down from $649). For mtDNA, the sale price is $139 (down from $199).
At 23andMe, the sale ends December 2. The Ancestry+Traits kit is sale priced at $79, down from $199, and the Health+Ancestry kit at $99, down from $199.
Living DNA‘s holiday sale includes its Ancestry kit, on sale for $79, down from $99, its Wellbeing kit priced at $99, down from $129, and its Wellbeing & Ancestry kit at $149, down from $149. Buying three or more kits at once brings free shipping as well. The sales pages don’t indicate when the sale ends.
DNA sales prices… a little something to be thankful for this fall season.
Cite/link to this post: Judy G. Russell, “Fall 2019 DNA sales,” The Legal Genealogist (https://www.legalgenealogist.com/blog : posted 3 Nov 2019).
Thank you for this information. Dave is thinking of sending for an FTDNA, YDNA Surname Test for 67 markers. Because there is no Surname Project for his surname and he doesn’t want to start a project, I am having a difficult time convincing him to proceed. Do you have any ideas or have written any articles I can read and convince him to proceed with the test? He is age 75 years.
He will still get matches to everyone in the database who matches his YDNA whether there’s a surname project or not. Many — perhaps even most — testers don’t join a surname project. So while having a project can be very helpful, not having one doesn’t mean there isn’t a lot of potential value in testing. And even if he gets no value at all for his own research, his male relatives a generation or two from now may bless his name for getting his DNA into the database to help them answer their family history mysteries. At the rock bottom minimum, it’s a legacy we call all leave to the future.
Are prices likely to be lower or higher starting on Black Friday? What’s the usual discount pattern tell us is the best time of year to buy Y-DNA and mtDNA tests?
Also, people need to remember that a Y-DNA test is not necessarily going to show you a lot of matches with people who have the same surname. Surnames were not fixed until very recently in our history and the point in time where you and any given match connect will more than likely predate that. I’m no expert so feel free to set me straight if my perception of that is wrong. This has just been my personal experience with family members’ tests.
I also realize MPE could be an issue for some, but so far it’s more that the connection predates the surname.
There’s no real answer for the “when’s the best sale” question — the data hasn’t been consistent as far as I know. As for the utility of YDNA, it all depends on what you’re looking for and how many people have tested.