Makes me wonder if one were to take a 'college town', introduce tagged forks into the local dining facility at the beginning of the academic year, then beginning at midterms, start checking local thrift stores to see if they start "floating up". Increase these checks after the end of the academic year, to continue to chart when or if they appear.

From this, we can perhaps extrapolate a "fork drift" factor that the school could then use to determine future fork ordering? ;)