"...... figuring $16.00 per 9 oz bottle of Trail Boss vs. $23.00 per 16 oz. bottle of Unique."
Trail Boss, using Power Valley's pricing, works out to be about 19.91 per lb. while Unique goes for 14.70 per pound. The nine ounce price of Trail Boss from Powder Valley is 11.20. Assuming the powders get approximately the same speed with the same charge, which is fairly close to correct, the Trail Boss works out to be about 35% more expensive per shot.
Using Powder Valley's prices, and conveniently ignoring shipping costs for both powders, works out to about 3.7 cents per shot for Trail Boss and 2.7 cents per shot for Unique, difference 1.0 cents per shot. I suppose if you bought powder by the eight pound batch that would serve to offset shipping costs to a large degree, especially if you bought in volume with others to lower the per unit cost in shipping.
DWB, if you're paying 23.00 per lb. for Unique, you're getting robbed....big time! Even locally I get Unique for around eighteen bucks for a single pound from Scheel's.
I note that 13 grains of Red Dot gets in the 1100 fps vicinity with a 405 from my Marlin 22", while 16 of Unique gets 1260. If you really want to lowball things, Promo can be had for about 10.50 to 11 bucks per lb. in eight pound jugs, and gets the same speed as Red Dot at the same charge weight.
I have not found much difference between the fast powders in terms of accuracy, including Trail Boss. Given that all must develop approximately the same pressure to get the same velocity, this hasn't surprised me a whole lot. In any event, with plainbase bullets, the slower powders produce the best accuracy for me at a given velocity level, assuming it isn't too low, as in the 1100 to 1400 fps range. Such as 2400, 4759, 5744, etc.