I do buy a lot of tickets, which does go to priority points/rank.

I was just outside top 1,000 cc donors last year and now I'm mid-900s. Also, if anything, it looks like there are fewer Legacy members this year as last year my LVL 2 rank was out of 498 and this year it is only out of 470 (I'm sure with the annual maintenance fee doubling some prior donors bowed out)...so I'm guessing you were passed by people close to you and not a bunch of new donors. Certainly not 500 of them.