I can reiterate that.
This is purely anecdotal, but illustrates the variety of shopping experiences.
The last two horses came out of discussions here on COTH.
The most recent one, I was looking for a horse with some specific bloodlines, and mentioned on a related thread the difficulty I was having finding an appropriate horse. Someone replied that she had such a horse, and she wasn’t marketing her, but she really did need to sell her. I looked at videos, and then drove 8 hours to look at her. I sent a deposit in couple of days, and scheduled a vetting. I didn’t go up there for the vetting, but was on the phone with the vet during the vetting. Then I went up there to pick her up.
The one before that was a weanllng bred by someone on the COTH forum, living in Alabama. Hurricane Katrina had destroyed her fencing and part of her barn, and she needed to sell her two weanlings NOW, at a reduced price. I contacted her, she sent photos and videos. I scheduled a vetting. I am in Virginia, and the other weanling was sold to someone in Maryland. The Maryland buyer (and her husband) and I drove her rig to a rest area on the Interstate in Camden SC, where we met the seller with her trailer, and transferred the weanlings from one trailer to the other, handed over the payments, and drove back up to Virginia and Maryland.
The one before that was a yearling TB that had been bred by my dressage instructor’s uncle, who had died suddenly from a heart attack. As she was the only other “horsey” person in the family, she was in charge of selling his horses. She was anxious for them to go to good homes, and asked if I knew anyone who might want the yearling. I wasn’t actively looking for another horse, but decided to buy him.
The one before that, I was looking through all the local ads, for a teenager who had been leasing my horse, but was ready to buy a horse of her own. I found a horse that jumped out at me (but was too green for the teenager), and was quite local (within 20 miles). I told the seller that I wasn’t really in the market, but I wanted to see her. I bought her, and she is currently my primary horse.
The before that, I got a call on Wednesday from someone saying that the full brother of a horse my sister had recently bought ( and was doing really well with), who had fallen on hard times, and was about to be sent to the Thurmont action (foot sore and not trained under saddle (the owner had worked him on the lunge, but couldn’t get him to move a single step under saddle) even though he was 10) unless someone bought him by Friday. I took a day of work (he was about an hour away) to see him, decided the “footsore” was due to overdue shoeing, and losing a shoe, and that he had a very trainable attitude. He came home in the trailer with me. He was not as athletic or brave as his sister, but became a nice lower level horse, and was the one being leased by the teenager who was ready to buy a horse of her own in the above case.
The one before that took 2 years of searching (though I was leasing another horse, so I had something to ride and compete), from central Virginia to Pennsylvania, and I ended up buying a horse belonging to a client of my vet, who said “this is the perfect horse for you”, even though I was looking for a 3 or 4 year old, and she was a late yearling.