You sure thats for Platinum only, I bought a kit several years ago
and  it was $90 for the same increment.

 Are these negatives very high in contrast or just very
dense but normal contrast?  Printing out methods tend to be
somewhat self-masking, that is the areas exposed lose
sensisitivity with exposure. This results in a lowering of
shadow contrast which allows increasing exposure to get
details in the highlights while retaining shadow detail. It
works best with high contrast negatives but won't help with
those that are normal contrast but very dense.
  A relatively cheap way to test this is to obtain POP or
Printing Out Paper. This is exposed in direct sunlight in a
printing frame. POP, under the Centenial name, is available
from Bostick & Sullivan: http://www.bostick-sullivan.com 
and others. In order to make the resulting images permanent
they must be treated in a toner and fixed. The usual toner
contains Gold chloride so is not cheap but there are
alternatives. The Bostick & Sullivan site is a good one to
start out with for alternative processes of all sorts. Dick
Sullivan is the formost provider of materials for
platinum/paladium printing and also has materials for carbon
and other processes.
 Salt prints and albumin prints are fairly easy processes.
Both are printing out processes. The materials are not too
expensive except for the gold toner. Not much gold is used
so its not in the same class is platinum or paladium.
 You can also try a reducer on the negatives but this has
the hazard that the negativs can be ruined. There are a
number of reducers, the choice again depends on whether the
negatives are excessively contrasty or excessively dense.

There's also Kallitype which is supposed to be like platinum printing but
with silver salts.  The examples I've seen look very nice.  Photographer's
Formulary has kits for both..

    Did you consider making a contrast reducing mask ?

Regards,

  John S. Douglas, Photographer -  http://www.puresilver.org
       Vote "No! for the status quo. Vote 3rd party !!