Yesterday, my husband and I went out shopping for Black Friday. We did not leave the house until almost noon, but we were okay with that. My husband actually went out twice; the first outing was a spur of the moment trip with his brother on Thursday night around ten. His brother had never done the Black Friday thing before, and they had found a couple of items that they were interested in while they were checking out the ads after Thanksgiving dinner.
I was still awake, doing my writing work when my husband returned home with just a couple of small items. Neither he nor his brother had gotten the items that they had been trying for, a laptop under two hundred dollars and a flat screen TV for about the same. Both items had required would – be buyers to get in line around three in the afternoon on Thanksgiving so that they could obtain tickets for the items. Both my husband and his brother knew that their chances would be slim, as they were not going to the store until around ten, but they went anyways just in case.
Of course, while my husband and I were driving the forty five minutes to the shopping area, we talked about Black Friday. Both of us agreed that there were very few compelling deals in the store advertisements. Of course, that would make our shopping trip simpler, but where were the deals that we had seen a few years ago? We talked about the past couple of years, and the major deals that we had gotten on Black Fridays past.
The first year that we decided to try shopping in the wee hours of the morning was 2008. We were in the midst of remodeling the home that he had bought for us a year earlier, so we were on the lookout for appliances and other things for the house in addition to gifts. I do not remember exactly what else we got that year, but I distinctly remember walking in to Sears when it opened around five or six that morning and seeing a front loading washer and dryer pair for around six hundred dollars. I was certain that the price was six hundred dollars for each piece, but my husband thought that the price was for the set. It was a much nicer set than the top loaders that we had bought at Home Depot a week earlier so we decided to ask about the price. It was the price for the set, and we snapped one up pronto.
We got other great deals that year and the next two as well, on digital cameras, digital photo frames, cookware, cutlery, and clothing just to name a few. This year, we only saw a couple of things that we wanted to go out for – clothes for our son that were on sale for more than half off, winter boots for him for about the same discount, a digital camera for my sister in law, and a Power Wheels Jeep for our son. We are wondering whether it was just us, or the area where we live. Were there great deals out there this year, but just not great deals on the things that we wanted? I would be curious to hear what others are feeling. How was your Black Friday?
Photo by cohdra on morguefile.com.