The black luggage tags are a pretty common site in economy exit rows on those flights, to say nothing of first class. It's much easier to qualify if most of your flights are long. I have huge amounts of sympathy for anyone who earns EP with an average segment length less than a thousand miles or so.

Once in a while I wonder, though, if all the people with tags are EP. I got 3 tags with my initial qualification at the end of 2000 and another 3 with my 2001-2 kit. That's more than I have bags to put them on. Still more will hopefully come next year and beyond. I haven't given any away, but with X0,000 EPs in the world and all of them having at least that many tags, you have to assume that some of them did!

Just musing ... wonder what they'd go for on ebay ...