Yes you can get a good assortment of tabs for less than the price of a new release game. I never buy mtx in games but didn't feel bad about this.
Though, some players are a little sore over how they seem to be adding very specialised tabs in new leagues. There is of course a perverse incentive at play to design content to require tabs that can be sold to us.
Namely, stash tabs, as inventory takes up a lot of space. It's not too expensive though.