One of my biggest frustrations is that when I discovered computers (I was a late starter) in about 1997 there were still quite a lot of pretty decent .com's you could hand reg. I picked up a few, because they interested me and I thought I could use them myself, but at that point I had no idea there was money to be made from domains.
If I could time travel back to the mid 1990s...
I think the recent .uk ROR was a specific case where it was possible to hand reg some reasonable names. Yes, most of the ones I really wanted I got through a selection of drop catching routes. But there was especially a few days' window when Crazy would let you pick out domains that people were waiting for general release to the public the next Monday, and I got a few nice ones through them.
The other thing I love, from a hand-regging point of view is the unscheduled 'drops' when people decide to delete their registrations through Nominet. These don't get flagged up long in advance like most 92-day drops, and they suddenly appear. Those can be such a delight.
There are also sometimes names that have been suspended for over a year and three times I have phoned up Nominet and said 'Why aren't they released?' and they've said they'll check it out and get back to me, and then I've been told 'If you remain alert, these will probably drop sometime in the next 24-48 hours' and they did.
I have my eyes on a few like that this month - really nice ones, abandoned in suspension land.
I agree that scripts is the best approach, obviously, but there are opportunities for hand reggers if they stay alert and do their homework. I financed my way through my nurse training through the sale of hand-regged domain names, quite a few sold to people here.