Where would I find them being sold were I interested in picking one up Jim?
I go to the Spring and Fall Knob Creek shows near Louisville, KY. I live within 30 miles, so it's a no-brainer. A lot of the fellows go to Blade; it's farther than I want to travel and only a month or so after the Spring KC, so I probably won't ever make it to Blade. However, you can sometimes find someone else who's going to a show and will agree to either buy, or place an order, for you -- they are generally referred to as proxies on the boards.
There's an upcoming A.G Russell show in Arkansas that Busse will have a booth at (
http://www.knifeevent.com/), so you might ask if someone's going there and if they might proxy for you, although it's harder for a new guy to get a proxy because the buyer needs to trust that he'll get reimbursed if he buys knives for someone out-of-pocket. The best way to proxy is to set up an account with Busse Combat, then a proxy only needs to have the crew write up an invoice for you -- the Busse crew will charge your card and ship the knife directly to you after the show, which is a lot less risk and work for a potential proxy.
Last year, the Busse crew sent a lot of knives to a show in Easton PA -- I don't know if they'll do it again this year, but if so, that'd be the closest show for you. It's a big advantage to be able to hold a knife to see how it fits your hand and feel the balance. I've seen several pictures of knives that I thought I'd like a lot more than when I actually held them, and a couple others that I was ambivalent about until I held them, then had to have one (or two, or twelve, or ...).
