There should be an easier way to obtain low-level materia

[CKNovel]

Are they not dirt cheap on your servers market?
They come in an over-abundance from airships, people off them on the MB for sometimes under market value.

Can't remember when, but when I did my ARR relic for WAR, (during Stormblood if I remember well), those low level materia were more expensive than the currently used Materias.
They could remove the drops from monsters in dungeon such as skin and other useless things and replace those with materias.