Now I live in the middle of nowhere, and have to go to Asheville, NC, or Johnson City, TN to find good music stores. However, my closest option is Greeneville, TN, a smaller town but with a Sam Goody's, Wal Mart, and K-Mart.
I got up this morning intending to head towards Asheville, but stopped at Sam Goody's in Greeneville. They had the largest display area dedicated to U2. It was half empty after the store being open 1 hour. They only had one of the highest end limited edition, which does have fast cars and was what I wanted...but for $36, I passed. Just to be curious, I went to K-Mart. They had the box (had about 50 CD's, I think) open on the counter, and I asked if they had the collector's edition...lady said they only had 3 and they were sold out. Now this is not a U2 town!!!
Couldn't resist stopping at Wal Mart, where they also had a dedicated U2 display. They had one collector's edition like Sam Goody's...and it was still $32!!! I wanted Fast Cars, though, so I made irrational purchase, as they did have the CD and DVD for $17. I couldn't wait on a 30 minute drive once I finally got the limited edition, and I figured if these retailers in my area are only getting a few of the collector's edition, then I had better buy one while I had it in my hands.
BTW, as a chart watcher, I have to update the video progress, as Vertigo goes from #8 to #6 on VH-1 top 20 videos...reversing the brief trend last week (from #7 to #8). The USA Today review says this is the best album ever from U2...echoing most of the reviews I've seen but this is a paper with big time circulation and they made no bones about saying "Atomic" is better than AB and JT. So I'll finish my rambling by upping my 1st week sales estimate to 635,000, more due to the USA Today review than my very unscientific study of sales in the middle of nowhere.