Take all of last year's Black Friday wisdom about procrastinating for better prices
and endangering your physical safety for deals and shove it up the nearest
chimney.
This isn't 2008, and retailers aren't piling up inventory while knocking down prices.
Black Friday sales in July, and the discounts they'll be offering on a limited supply
of Black Friday products won't offset the time and aggravation saved by
avoiding overnight lines, letting others push through plate glass doors and
getting all your holiday shopping done through deals being offered right now.
Besides, according to the National Retail Federation, those starting their
holiday shopping now are just lollygagging. The NRF estimates that 18.8% of
holiday shoppers began attacking their holiday lists last month, while another
nearly 19% got a head start in September or before. Retailers, meanwhile,
began their big push last month as Toys R Us put its entire 80-page
on electronics and Sears began a series of "Black Friday Now" sales.
The November weeks before Black Friday are going to be an even bigger
celebration of consumerism, with the NRF predicting that more than 40% of holiday
shoppers will hit stores for the first time this month. They have a very specific
and Saving Tracker found that 51% of consumers want to wrap up their holiday
shopping a week before Christmas or sooner, with 84% of shoppers looking for deals
along the way. Retailers are all too eager to help, as Target is planning a four-day
sale starting the Sunday before Thanksgiving featuring toys, electronics and
entertainment products discounted nearly 50%. Meanwhile, JCPenney
are already offering daily holiday specials.
That said, some deals are definitely better than others. While it'll be difficult
to beat the $3 appliances Target's rumored to be offering Black Friday, prices
on some toys, electronics and other wish-list staples are worth checking out now.
TheStreet did some bargain hunting and found seven categories on which savvy
shoppers can save without sacrificing their sanity or tryptophan-induced
post-Thanksgiving sleep:
1. Toys
 Courtesy of Matel |
As we mentioned, Toys R Us put its holiday
toy book on sale back in October, so that's
roughly how long toys have been a bargain.
Target, though, became the toy store du jour
earlier this month when a Wall Street Journal
price comparison found that Wal-Mart's toy prices
were significantly higher than Target's in several instances. That didn't sit well in
Arkansas, where folks at Wal-Mart headquarters went on toy box damage control by
slashing toy prices to within a dollar of Target's total. So who wins? You do.
wisecracking sanitation vehicle Stinky the Garbage truck for $60 and $56 apiece,
Target chopped its price to $50, encouraging Wal-Mart and Amazon to follow suit.
Meanwhile, a Barbie Video Girl -- a doll with a not-creepy-at-all digital camera lodged in
its sternum -- sells for as much as $60 at Kohls and $50 at Target, but fell to $40 at
Wal-Mart and Amazon after a bloody round of price cuts. You could totally make all your
G.I. Joes fight all your Transformers and still not have a toy war of this magnitude.
2. HDTVs
 Courtesy of Samsung |
The picture's been looking pretty dark for HDTV
prices for much of the year, with research firm
DisplaySearch predicting an 8% drop in average
LCD television prices and iSuppli forecasting prices
as low as $200 for a 32-inch 720p HDTV and $500
for a 42-inch 1080p model. They pretty much
nailed it, as a 22-inch 720p Sharp AQOUS LCD television can be had for $180 at JR.com.
3. e-readers
 Courtesy of Amazon |
With Amazon and Barnes and Noble (NYSE:
Kindle and Nook e-readers about as far as they'll
go, there's just about no hope for a Black Friday
miracle. That said, e-readers are as inexpensive as
they've ever been. Amazon cut the Kindle to $140,
which is less than the $190 3G model but still not the best bargain out there. The Nook
comes in at $150, which is considerably less than the $250 Nook Color, but is an even
better value for PayPal customers who get a 15% discount, knocking the price down to
a sub-Kindle $127.50. If you're a bookworm concerned more with price than Wi-Fi,
bet at a svelte $120.
4. Xbox Kinect and PlayStation Move
 Courtesy of Microsoft |
Unlike the prices for console bundles, which are
going to vary wildly between now and Black Friday,
the prices of starter bundles for Microsoft (NasdaqGS:
devices aren't going to budge an inch. Why? First off,
they're terribly popular -- with the Move fueling a more
than $20 million surge in video game accessory sales after its September release and early
sales of the Kinect forcing Microsoft to revise the device's holiday sales estimate to 5 million
from 3 million. You're going to pay the full $100 for the Move bundle and $150 for the Kinect
bundle. Just suck it up and get it over with already, you big whiner.
5. iPad
 Courtesy of Apple |
has sold more than 8 million units without the benefit
of Christmas songs and doorbuster sales. Do you think
Steve Jobs and company are going to start messing
with the bottom line now? As a general rule, Apple d
oesn't do sales (though Wal-Mart's $185 price on an 8
gigabyte iPod Touch bundle seems to be an exception). In fact, Apple did you a favor by
making the iPad available in such places as Best Buy, Target, Wal-Mart and the Verizon
Wireless store. How do you repay them? By fruitlessly getting in someone's way on Black
Friday just to find out that the Wi-Fi-only iPad is the same $499 it was when it was released?
Save everyone some time and aggravation by just picking one up now if you're hell-bent on
getting one by the holidays.
6. Kitchen and Dining
 Courtesy of Hamilton Beach |
Admittedly, it's hard to beat $3 appliances, but a deep
discount is still hard to pass up. Wal-Mart is offering
vacuum for $150, or for $50 less than Target or Kmart.
price of its store-exclusive Hamilton Beach 18-quart
Roaster to $50 from $60.
7. Smartphones
 Courtesy of HTC |
There's usually a simple answer for how much a
smartphone costs: $199. Every so often, however,
you get some leeway. Best Buy, for example, is
offering Samsung's Fascinate Galaxy S phone for
$149 -- a $50 discount from the Verizon Wireless
version and similarly less expensive than the new
Samsung Continuum. It's also hacked the price of HTC's Droid Incredible to $100 from $149
this week, just because they feel like it. Be careful, however, as the Research In Motion
two-day sale over the weekend had been free all week long.
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