All 3 letter names became unavailable for hand registration, shortly after the, approximately, 1,500 remaining .infos were purchased, en masse, in february of 2004. (Will see if I can dig up the exact details). I was tracking and running regular searches on all possible 3 character name combinations in the the tlds and .us ext throughout the first 9 mos of 2004 so was able to pinpoint the approx. dates that all 3 *character* .coms became registered, (7-14-2005) as well as all hyphenated 3 chars, (L-L, N-N, L-N, N-L) in all tld's, (mid-Aug 2004).
During the first few months of 2004 hand registrations of 3 LLL .info and .us names were still possible. (all 3 LLL .biz had been taken earlier). During Jan,Feb, early Mar, 2004 it was possible to pick up 3 letter .biz and .us names simply by waiting for them to drop and than regging them, ASAP. By late Mar 2004, competition picked up, so I started backordering them w/ inexpensive services, (ie Goddy.)
The last "pure", non-mixed L/N name that I was able to hand register,(ie w/o a B/O service), was 195,us, on Jun 16, 2004. That, was probably a fluke- a name that had slipped under the radar and that I happenned upon, simply, because I was running massive searches ATM. My eyes almost popped out when this turned up, and I quickly went to my registrar but was unable to reg it, as it was showing up as unavail on their whois. My first thought was "Bummer! Someone had already beat me to it. "(The competition was fierce). Undeterred, I tried another registra where it showed as avail, I regged it and no apologetic notes from the registrar showed up in my email box over the next couple of days and, les voilá!
I dug up 2 of my old posts from the archives that provide some of the facts and figures that were being reported, as these events were taking place, that may interest you:
http://www.namepros.com/showthread.php?t=38753&highlight=character
http://www.namepros.com/showthread.php?t=43917&highlight=character