After waiting about nine months for this lens from B&H, I gave up and ordered from three smaller brick and mortar shops. I told each store what I was doing. Soon after I ordered from the brick and mortars, Nikon raised the price by about $200 dollars. To my surprise, about 4 weeks after I made the second set of orders one of the brick and mortars came through. At first I was nervous that I'd been given a returned lens (that probably had happened to me a while ago before I learned how to test lenses), but my copy of the super light 500 Nikor appears to be stellar. I now suspect instead that the store that sold me the lens had several earlier back orders but at the earlier price; I was moved up in line because the store could sell me the lens at the higher price. By the way, I'd be interested in knowing if the large mail order shops sometimes sell problematic returned lenses especially when supplies are limited.

I probably was the person who wrote that compared to the small stores, the odds of getting such a lens from a high volume mail order place are much lower. I think I got this notion from Thom Hogan's site.

I ordered one of these telephoto lenses on Dec. 18 in 2018 from B&H. my go to camera store. After waiting until about June, I followed Thom's advice and ordered from two brick and mortar camera stores. I got one from Roberts camera store in Indianapolis by mail order about two months later. Apparently the large mail order houses like B&H and Adorama have much longer wait lists relative to the supply of hard to get items like this lens. Hope this helps.