I've been watching as a favorite shop closes up and sells off it's remaining stock. There was this one rod... a TFO BVK 5wt to be specific. I cast one a couple of years ago at the Louisville show and fell in love (darn you Jack Hise). Well, fast forward... the aforementioned shop has one and I have picked up it's buttery goodness no less than a dozen times and just grinned at the wife, knowing I could neither justify the purchase nor afford it on my allowance. (Self imposed.) A month ago I noticed it had been deeply discounted from $289 to $159. WOW-EE! Trouble is, I recently decided to knuckle down and replace the nearly bald tires on my pickup, rack up several hundred dollars in medical bills (from 6 months ago that just showed up with a notice that they were due in a week!) Oh, and I thought it would be good to lock down the old credit card and finally pay it off. (It has hovered at $750 for years.) So needless to say, the rod is out of the question. We make near-weekly trips that bring us in close proximity to the shop, so the itch to check and see if the price has dropped further can be scratched often. I hadn't been there in over 2 weeks and I had come to the point that I was actually hoping it had sold so I could quit tormenting myself. The wife and I stopped in last evening and much to my dismay, not only had it not sold, now there were two! Self control is so difficult.