I’m with you, you have to keep an eye out for sales.  Currently, I don’t use much charcoal and I’ve been trying a few new lumps.  However, when I got started, I loaded up the trunk when there was a good sale.  There was a charcoal call Rancher that was really good and I got a bunch of that cheap when they were discontinuing it.  That was a long time ago.  On the flip side, I went in on some coconut charcoal from the Philippines once.  We got a pallet shipped to us and split it.  It was very expensive, but it was great stuff.  I could load a ring of charcoal in my 18 WSM, not even loaded to the max, and I’d have charcoal left after a 16+ hour overnight butt cook.  I still have a box of that stuff left.  Just can’t bring myself to use it.