The amazing annual Black Friday "What Did You Get" Thread (1 Viewer)

[Nathan*W]

This is the place, folks - share your stories of lines and early rising, of beating the crowds, and that special deal that you happened to get.

 

[John Dirk]

Well, I happen to think that this is mostly marketing hype. The real deals are yet to come. My wife is out looking for a food mixer, and we may purchase a camcorder later.

John

 

[Rocky F]

Wow, I guess everybody's still out shopping. I picked up the $128 Magnavox BluRay player from Walmart. I got to the stack of players at about 4:45 and waited with a crowd until 5. It took about a minute for the stack to disappear once they let folks start grabbing them. I actually spent more time checking out than shopping, but that was due to some technical issues.

 

[David_Jr]

We didn't goout that early this morning, 7:30. By then the crowds had died down, but a lot of stuff was gone. Went to WM to get Madden 09, Nascar 09 for 360 $30 each & Mario DS bundle $134. Got the Nascar 09, others "long gone". To Staples to get 250 GB drive & 8 GB thumb. Got the 250 for $59 & 640 GB (impulse) for $69 (both external) but thumb "long gone". Off to Target got Mario Bundle for $145 with $10 gift card. They couldn't get the register to prompt for GC so they took ten off, sweet! Everything else I was interested in was gone. Came home went to Amazon got a few 360 games reasonable and a Harmony 880 remote for $99 with free shipping. Looks like the hot item this year was flat panels. I didn't need one, but a lot of people were getting them.

 

[Jimmy M]

I got a lot of sleep. We didn't go out at all.

Jim

 

[Richard Gallagher]

A crowd broke down the door of a Wal-Mart in Valley Stream, N.Y. this morning and an employee was trampled to death. A pregnant woman also was knocked down by the mob and had a miscarriage.

Wal-Mart employee dies on Black Friday after being knocked down by shoppers | To Live and Buy in LA | Los Angeles Times

 

[Malcolm R]

A tragedy, to be sure, but not unexpected when retailers promote the hell out of these "big, special buys" then only have 5 or less of the actual item available. If they had enough stock for everyone who wanted them, there would be no need to mass at the doors and stampede into the store and over anyone unfortunate enough to get in the way of the masses who have been teased for days by mob-inducing advertised specials.

I hope the victims' families make Walmart pay dearly for their Black Friday shenanigans.

 

[Regulus]

Sorry to hear what happened in New York. Wal Mart should do what I now see many other Retailers do when there are some Hot Items in Limited Supply, namely pass out Vouchers for those items on a First-Come First-Serve Basis, in order to prevent such a Stampede from happening. :frowning: From what I observed here in the Daytona Beach area things seemed to go smoothly today. Getting up at about 2:00 AM I ordered Several DVD Boxsets and Movies from Amazon.com Departing my house at about 3:00 AM I went to JC Penney first to get the Snowglobe that they give away for free. (I Collect these things) At 4:00 the doors opened. I got the Snowglobe then did an about face and exited the store. I then made my way to Circuit City. Passing Best Buy on my way there I noticed a large crowd waiting outside the Store. Arriving at Circuit City at about 4:15 AM there were between 50 to 100 people waiting there for the Store to open. A Store Employee passed out tickets for the Big Ticket Items, but I didn't need any of them. (I Got my HDTV Last Year!) When the Store opened I went to the Video Bins and got Seasons 1-4 of Futurama and Season 4 of CSI Miami which they had on sale for $14.99 each. I alsp picked up a half a dozen movies for $9.99 each. I then went over to Toys R Us to see if they had any of those Sylvania Portable DVD Players they were advertising for $69.99. Arriving there at about 5:30 AM I found the store was quite packed, but they had the Players in Stock so I got one along with another movie. I then went over to Sam's Club. That Store was not crowded at all, and I took advantage of the free breakfast they offered. (At this point my Spending Money was Exhausted!)
I Spent about half as much as I did last year, but that figure was inflated by the 37-Inch HDTV I purchased. I purchased more DVD Box Sets this year than I did last year, but less Movies. I will now sit back and ENJOY the Holidays.

 

[Sam Posten]

The stores I went to were EMPTY compared to previous years.

As for me:
Amazon:
Lich King for $26 for a friend,
Too Human for $20 for me.
Missed out on Far Cry for PC for $29.99 and l4Dead for $20 =(


GoGamer:
Stalker Clear Sky for $20
FEAR Directors Edition for $5
Lord of the Rings Shadow of Angmar Special Edition for PC for $2.90

New Egg:
Newegg.com - HP Pavilion M9350F(KQ498AA) Phenom X4 9850(2.5GHz) 6GB DDR2 750GB NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GT Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit - Desktop PCs for $650 with the secret code. My sister wanted a cheap PC, so shes getting this, it's her money I'da paid more for a better rig...

Circuit City:
Enemy Territory $5
WoW box set for a friend $15
Stir of Echos Blu $11.99
Dark Sector PS3 $19.99 but stupid me I already bought that at Frys so its going back.

Best Buy:
Seinfeld Seasons 8&9 to complete my collection, $15 each
Cloverfield, Simpsons, and Sweeney Todd Blus for $16.99 each.

I got what I REALLY wanted tho and that was 3x 8 GB Compact Flash cards for $30 each with a $70 rebate, so that made me happy. The Beach/Buydig server was hammered when it started but finally got through.

Sam

 

[TravisR]

edit: moved to a more appropriate thread.

 

[ManW_TheUncool]

Can't say I got any truly amazing deals, but I did break down and bought these from Amazon in the past 24 hours:

* Mad Men Season 1 BD - $17.95 (before they knocked it down by another buck)
* Transformers BD - $9.99
* Trading Places BD - $8.99 (yeah, I know about the PQ issues, but figured it should be worth upgrading over my original DVD at that price)
* Last King of Scotland DVD - $4.99


* Nyko Blu Wave remote for PS3 - $7.95 (at that price, why not(?) ... what w/ my annoyance at the danged stop button issue between the bluetooth remote and BD-J on top of not being able to integrate w/ my uni remote at all w/out something like this )
* Scenic National Parks: Crown Jewel Collection - $34.95 (was thinking about it earlier, but finally broke down and ordered it to go w/ the remote and get free shipping )


Also ordered these from Amazon on Wed for pre-BF (though some were not specially priced, but were helpful to fill the order at >$50 to make use of the $10 BML coupon ):

* Mariah Carey's Adventures of Mimi BD - $11.95
* March of the Penguins BD - $9.99
* Angela Gheorghiu's Live from Covent Garden DVD - $13.97
* Serenity BD - $19.99


Also, paid for much of these Amazon orders w/ my $125 GC (from opening a Discover Card account a month or so ago ).


And picked up these locally from J&R's BF sale (on Wed evening):

* Hustle & Flow BD - $9.99
* Black Snake Moan BD - $9.99
* Sky Captain BD - $9.99
* Manchurian Candidate BD - $9.99 (the remake version w/ Denzel)
* a few other DVDs from $3.99 to $4.99 each


Was contemplating getting the new Beyonce concert BD from Amazon for $17.99, but think I'll just borrow my coworker friend's copy for now -- he's ordering it, but won't have a player yet. It'll probably be available for less at some point I imagine -- or should probably still be easily found for that price whenever.


BTW, I noticed that J&R has the 2TB Western Digital My Book external drive w/ RAID function for ~$270. It's still USB only, but tempting. If it had the works for connectivity, I might've gone for it. But since I still have plenty of storage space left in my 500GB non-RAID one, it probably makes sense for me to just wait and see...

_Man_

 

[Dennis Nicholls]

Here Office Depot and Cabelas share a parking lot - both opened at the more civilized hour of 6 AM. Both had long lines when I showed up exactly at 6 AM.

I only was shopping for some Cabelas bargains. A couple of hunter's switchblades for $9 each, a Mossberg 702 for $99, a meat grinder for $49, and a nice "early season" parka for $19. It took me until after 9 AM to get out of there. I made one run through checkout with everything but the rifle since there's so much paperwork involved in firearm sales. Then I went back in to get the rifle. Cabela's had people walking the line before opening giving out tickets for the limited rifles in order to prevent a scene in the firearms department, so I knew I could take my time with that. The crowd in Cabela's was civilized, unlike some of the reports I'm hearing from other places. :rolleyes

If you are not squeamish read this story: 2 men die in shooting at Toys 'R' Us in Palm Desert - Los Angeles Times

 

[Jimi C]

" A pregnant woman also was knocked down by the mob and had a miscarriage."

I dont know where you got that news from but I just read not 2 minutes ago on CNN that the baby was ok and she was released from the hospital.

 

[Will_B]

I stayed up until 3am for the Amazon 2am Pacific Time early bird specials, hoping that the 6 BluRay titles pictured were just a teaser for an even wider selection of 2am discounts. But, no such surprises.

All the BluRay titles I want are still in the $20 range.

Woke up today quite groggy, stumbled into town, no crowds at all.

If I didn't already have an lcd tv today would have been a great day to buy one. But, already having one, I ended up with:

X-Men 3 dvd for $4 at Best Buy.

I'd previously picked up a couple seasons of La Femme Nikita for $15 each there. All sold out today, so, I should have gotten more.

But that's it. I'm doing good this year as far as not buying stuff I do not need.

 

[TravisR]

I went out at 9 PM and picked up The Devil's Rejects Blu-ray at Circuit City.

 

[Ron68]

I was only interested in the sales on DVDs and found them to be fairly lackluster this year, there wasn't anything as good as last years From the Earth to the Moon for $15 or the James Bond box sets for $20. I just chose items off my wish list, some of which have been on sale before the BF sales. I bought the following from Amazon yesterday and today:

3:10 To Yuma
Cloverfield
The Simpsons Movie
Tex Avery's Droopy: the Complete Theatrical Collection
Speed Racer (the movie)
The Little Rascals: The Complete Collection
Looney Tunes - Golden Collection, Volume Two
Elf (Infinifilm Edition)
One Million Years B.C.
CHiPs - The Complete Second Season (gift for a friend)
Classic Christmas (CD) by Billy Gilman

 

[BrettV]

iron man blu $15 x 2
transformers blu $10 x 2

that's about it. Amazon is great.

 

[ScottR]

Amazon: Iron Man Blu-Ray
The Fall of the Roman Empire

Wal-Mart: Iron Man dvd
The Incredible Hulk dvd

Target: The Office Season One
National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation
The Polar Express in 3D Blu-Ray

 

[Jeff Adkins]

I love the fact that Amazon matched just about everyone's BF prices on DVDs and BDs. I didn't have to leave the house and it will all be at my door on Tuesday!

 

[Regulus]

There were a couple of titles they didn't, so out I went to get them!

(Besides there is no way I can get the JC Penney Snowglobe online for Free!)