Welcome! It's all been said: buy what you can in the store and hope what you like comes up on one of the exchanges. bladeforums has a bussekin-only trading area where you see a lot of good blades come up from time to time.

You can also purchase at knife shows that the three companies participate in, or, if you can find a nice guy or gal, you can sometimes convince someone to act as a proxy for you at the shows.

Last way is to watch the bussekin forums or the busse discussion forum on BF for the occassional "ganza"--online mad shopping sprees where Jerry Busse puts up for sale a bunch of knives at a specific time. When he says "Go!" everyone who wants in sends in an email with their name, contact info and what they want to buy. It's first come first serve, so there's no guarantee you can get what you want.

I forgot. Occasionally, a super nice dog, rat, or Hog (although I'm not sure the the latter exists <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/laugh.gif" alt="" /> ) will PM you with a great price on the blade you are looking for. The store sites are not exchanges and no one solicits or sells knives here, but at times, it is obvious that someone is jonesing for a particular blade. If a lucky dog has one or more that they want to share, they MIGHT PM you. But generally, that's not gonna happen much <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/laugh.gif" alt="" />

Hope that helps!