I happened to be at a CPW office yesterday morning (turning in some tags, actually) and there were people camped out in chairs. One guy said the 10th person in line showed up at 6:30 am (office opens at 8am). I asked the CPW employee if there were some high value (lots of pref pts) tags returned and he said no, any tag that requires 5 or more pts goes to the next person in the draw (not to the re-issue list). CPW's policy, at least at that office is to give the first 10 people in line a number and they come back at 11am (when the sale starts). They have 5 registers, so 2 customers at each register and at 11am they start trying to get tags for those 10 people. They are fairly certain that they do not have any better luck than the people logging in at home.
So, 10+ people at that one office willing to wait in line for hours for no better chance than Joe Schmoe tells me there are a LOT of people desperate to get those tags.