Well, I will say that most of the big-shot agents don't even walk the grounds checking hundreds of yearlings in serach of the good ones.....most of them short-list horses now, which for you who don't understand means that they outsource hire other agents to go out (the agents split the ones they review by either catalog number or barns usually) in the first days of showing on the grounds during a sales week and disqualify 90+% of the horses in the sale based on what that particular big-shot pinhooker wants in terms of specifications - such as conformation, size, precociousness, etc.....

Then, after the big-shot agent has his 3 or 4 people review every horse in the sale, he consolidates the data and THEN actually goes out to check a very limited group of prospects......I know a guy who short-lists for a popular agent I won't name, and he said that this guy's grading system is SO strict that he usually will only qualify about 10% of the horses he looks at.....

Buzz Chace, Demi....most of the big dogs do this....so, I guess the point is that they never actually slave over hundreds of horses searching for the jewel in the stack.....as a matter of fact, most of the horses actually come to the big buyers because the consignors will call or seek out the big money clients when they know they have something the market is going to really like....