I would say the way the 2nds sale went this year hurt resellers the most and opened up the sale to a much, much wider audience. I got lucky that one time when I was visiting Denver it just happen to be the weekend of the 2nds sale. Stopped by on a whim. Stood in line for 2 hours. They only let X amount of people in the sale area at a time, which is good. There were a TON of 2nds and for the most part in no particular order or organization. Just big trays of mixed models spread out on rows of tables. It was just too tempting not to grab 2 of everything, but I restrained. It was nice to be able to choose several of the same model and pick the best one. Big plus for going to the actual event. Think I ended up getting 4 (Milli, 2 P2s and a Lil' Lionspy). The wife grabbed 2 and a t-shirt.
All that said, there were resellers there that could buy up to I think 100 knives (I could be wrong on that). Just boxes filled up and sorting them on counters. The one employee I was chatting with said the same ones are there every year and make the trip in just for the sale. Sometimes they bring multiple people to multiply the score count. So figure there are 5-10 of those resellers every year at the in-person sale snagging up 500 to 1000 knives. With the online sale, those knives went to those that don't have the ability to make it out to CO for the sale. Maybe in the future they do some online and some in-house, or maybe an online with lottery option. Who knows, but in the end I think everyone won. If you never planned on going to the actual store for the event, and you couldn't get checked-out at the online event, you really didn't miss out, because in the end, if it were a normal year, you wouldn't have got anything anyway unless you planned on making the trip out to Golden, CO. If you did get something, consider yourself lucky. If you normally go, you'll have next year to make-up for anything you didn't get this year.
Have a great holiday everyone!