I spoke with a couple others who rang up more than $6K, and saw a few more that had around that, but who I didn't ask. Money's one of those things that it's sometimes tough to work into the conversation. My haul was just over $1.8K after tax, and I was middling -- I saw a couple folks with just a knife or two, and one frequent attendee told me that he didn't buy a thing. There are some serious players who come to the Thursday night pre-sale, but there are also some more modest folk, so don't think that you have to take out a second mortgage to attend.

Honestly, I didn't think that I'd buy nearly as much as I did during the preview. When we lined up outside for the "rush" back into the room, I remarked that I had my eye on two knives, but wouldn't be upset if I didn't spend a cent. Then, while snatching possibilities to evaluate in a corner, five rats that weren't on my list found their way into my basket (I kept 3 of them) and the 911 mods were so popular that I grabbed a couple more than I intended to as investments.

I'm going to wander off topic for a moment -- I hear the word "decimate" used when people actually mean "annihilate". I've heard it on television reports recently and again in last night's debate -- decimation was a Roman legion-level punishment where 1 in 10 would be executed -- it means a 10% loss.
After the initial ruch, the tables were much closer to annihilated. Later, as people returned knives from their hoards, it appeared that perhaps half of the knives came back, but that's a lot to be gone in a matter of minutes.