Still debating: farm out screen printing or DIY

I was thinking last night about teaming up with a printer vs doing it myself. I believe both will benefit me and heres how:
I'm going to do my own shirts first. Nothing big, maybe 3 designs (I have 12 ready), whip up a dozen or so of each and see what happens. This will give me shirts to use to photograph for advertising, samples to show retailers and some to sell if I'm lucky enough. I can purchase a small pro kit and screens, etc for 200-250 and start with a few one color jobs to keep costs down, buying the shirts from a online warehouse. Hiring a screenprinter at this point is just too costly. I'd have to print 50-100 shirts of each to make it close to being cost effective. I'd rather start smaller and gauge response beforehand.
I will have to check online retailers that might be able to offer smaller runs of shirts. I might be able to find someone for this part online, then go local for the bigger runs.
After that I will revisit hiring a screen printer when I can gauge popularity so I can focus on the marketing/selling of the shirts rather than the making of them. I will definitely hire a local, small business screen printer for sure...as long as they are crafty.
Ill keep you posted. And by 'you' I mean...

**UPDATE**
Alright, I sent out an email to a local screen printer that does small run printing. They listed their prices here:
http://www.pranxtees.com/pricing.html
$5.56/shirt thats actually a really great price. Unfortunately, That isnt for the American Apparel shirt I want to us, so who knows. Hopefully it'll come back at around $8/shirt. That would settle it. I'd take that plunge right now. Plus with the added bonus of working and supporting local business is ideal.