My Black Friday Experience

For the last few years I’ve laughed at the poor saps who get up on Black Friday and fight the crowds for their discounts, this year I joined them. A few weeks ago I was fishing around on the net and found some preview ads, and I was hooked. My nephew, Tyler camped out at the Best Buy in Mason and was 7th in line. He went to the store at 7 pm on 22nd! He was after $150 laptop and some other crazy tech deals. He called at 10 that night and told me what was up.

No way was I spending the night in the cold and the items I was after were non techy so my plan was a 4:30 am awake time. My goal was hit a few stores up and only buy their hot buys without standing in line for more then 10 minutes. 4:30 came and went, and with a few snooze hits, I managed to slid into my car at 5:30 and sped to the local Walmart. I had my list for the stores I planned to hit up so I was ready.

Walmart wasn’t too crowded and I was able to pick up the stuff I needed and went on to Meijer. Meijer had the best deals and I almost kept driving when I saw a line out the door. They had a $100 20 inch flat LCD so the line to the electronic section was out the door ~6a.m. The rest of the deals were nicely layed out and after a couple trips up and down the deal isles went on my way. The next stop was HH Greg, it was dead less then 25 people in the store at ~7 am. I was in and out in less then 5 mintues. On next to Target. Target’s crowds were crowded. The one item I went for was sold out but I found a nice replacement deal they had going on that wasn’t advertised. My final stop was KMart, which again wasn’t crowded. Here is the roundup I got.

Walmart
- Baby Walker : was $20 got for $10
- 20 pack Hot Wheels : was $15 got for $10

Meijer
- Tonka Motor Truck : was $49 got for $24.99
- Sleeping Bag : was $15 got for $8
- 3 pillows : was $30 got for $10
- 2 Nerf Hoops : was $14 got for $2

HH Greg
- RCA 512MB MP3 Player : was $50 got for $20

KMart
- Magnetics Construction Set : was $49 got for $24.99
- Craftsman retractable light : was $20 got for $10
- Griddle : was $25 got for $17

Target
- Robe : was $18 got for $12
- Star Wars Transformers : was $35 got for $15
- 2 Hasbro board games : was $16 got for $8

If I had paid full retail for all the total would have been: $356
I ended up paying: $172

My saving was : $184

I was home by 8:30 am. 3 hours of shopping which saved me ~ $62.00 an hour. Not too bad, plus I didn’t wait in line for more then 10 minutes, plus I can now be classified as a poor sap myself.

Written by Tim on December 1st, 2006 with no comments.
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