X-Entertainment | What’s the deal?

What’s the deal?

Busy working on a ToyFare article tonight, so this may be a good time for a patented SNT survey.

What's the best deal you've ever gotten? Garage sales, store clearance sales, eBay hiccups -- they all apply. I have some great stories, but I'll save them for the comments thread. See you in a bit.

Posted by Matt on 08/11/2007. E-mail me!

Discussion Thread: 201 comments

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A little late for SNT, I know, but thought it was a good topic. I actually get great deals on records (lp’s) all the time as there is a record store about an hour north of me in some rat infested building that sells records for no more than $5 for the most part. I have purchased about 100 records over the last two years, and never spent more than $3 on any one. They have a few that are over that mark, but those are usually ones I am not interested in, as I don’t care about still packaged Beatles lp’s.

I got the entire Led Zep collection on vinyl for around $15 since I through IV were sold as a set for $7.

I also have been getting awesome deals on Ebay for NES games. Bought 18 games, including Contra, Mike Tyson’s Punch Out! and SMB 1-3 for about $25 total, and got the system for $12 plus $5 s/h. Best part was I got the Game Genie thrown in free cause the guy was getting rid of all his NES stuff.

Chestnuts roasted by adjohnson @ 08/13/2007 10:04 PM

Oi. Another Wii Update. I actually have had it freeze up coming back from the Internet channel.

THANKS NINTENDO!!!

Chestnuts roasted by Knegative @ 08/14/2007 12:37 AM

For $15, I got 25-30 VHS tapes of Star Trek TNG. And not those slipcover, single episode ones either. They were the clamshell “Special Edition” tapes, that had 2 or more episodes per tape.

Chestnuts roasted by Ronnie @ 08/14/2007 10:43 AM

Just renewed my cell phone contract with Sprint about two months ago. Been with them for about 5 yrs now. Called and told them I was thinking of switching to Verizon when my contract was up in April, at which point the rep transferred me to their ‘retentions’ department. See, Sprint has a group of people dedicated solely to keeping you with Sprint, and can off you deals not available to in-store, online, or through their regular reps.

Ended up getting a new plan for less money, but with more minutes, more texting, free web/data use, and two Motorola Q phones for about $10 each after rebates.

Chestnuts roasted by jokun @ 08/14/2007 10:55 AM

And sorry, I know I should have proof-read, but I forgot. Typos galore!

Chestnuts roasted by jokun @ 08/14/2007 11:02 AM

Finding a Fisher Price PXL 2000 camera at a Flea Market for $30, at the height of the PXL craze when they were going for about $2000 on Ebay.

Chestnuts roasted by Megan @ 08/14/2007 1:26 PM

I am a hardcore bargin shopper, so I have been lucky enough to snag some really great deals. Some of which include:

– A mint in the box Michael Myers limited edition doll from Spencer Gifts. The guy at the flea market was asking $20, but I offered $15 and he took it. Cheap ones on Ebay go for about $40.

– A brand new in the box old time popcorn maker to go with my movie theater theme for $3!

- A mint condition Lion King 2 disk DVD for $5 that I sold for $30 on Ebay

- 2 Faces of Death VHS tapes for $1 each

- I was somehow able to find 4 copies of Madman, a long OOP slasher, in a few locations around me. I bought them all for $5 each, kept one and sold the rest for around $30 each.

- My copy of Dr. Giggles I found for $4.00 and with my discount, received for $2.50.

- 2 DVD copies of The Stand for $6.00 each, which I sold for around $40 each

- My happiest bargin yet: I just won Halloween: The Perfect Collection from Germany. It’s limited to 6,000 copies. I scored it for $31 American dollars!

Chestnuts roasted by DarkPumpkin @ 08/14/2007 2:19 PM

I helped a friend move stuff around in her grandparents’ Auction Barn and when we were done, they told us to pick something and take it. I got a FREE self-contained record player that’s like a suitcase! STILL works like new!

I also went to a thrift store on a whim and found a virtually new pair of rollerskates (white with pink wheels and laces!) 3 bucks… thought they’ll never fit me… tried them on and fit like a dream!

Also got a RARE New Kids on the Block promo record from Europe with a mix of “The Right Stuff” I had never heard before for $5. It may not be worth that much, but to me, being a huge fan, it was the best ever!

Chestnuts roasted by Little Sara @ 08/14/2007 2:21 PM

I think some of you are confused between DEALS and THEFT.

I bought a TigerDirect barebones kit for $20 a few years ago. Case, motherboard, power supply, cd rom drive, keyboard, mouse and speakers for 20 after rebate. Scored some deals on the rest of the hardware and built a decent pc for 300.

Chestnuts roasted by NateAss @ 08/14/2007 3:31 PM

Magnavox Odyssey. In box. $2.

Chestnuts roasted by Trevor @ 08/14/2007 4:24 PM

I got an original Asteroids Deluxe arcade cabinet for FREE. Our old neighbor was a 50 somthing year old super-genius inventor type who got it somewhere broken just so he could fix it up and play around with it. He played it too much, beat the game, and was sick of it, so he gave it to my brother and I (young teenagers at the time) for free.
This guy was awesome. When I was like 7 He built a go-kart out of mostly ply-wood and a lawn mower engine. He let my brother and I drive it almost every day! He liked us because he was divorced and only got to see his daughter on some weekends.

Chestnuts roasted by Murderface @ 08/15/2007 2:35 PM

I paid $20 for a $120 Calphalon skillet.

…goodbye cheap nonstick.

Chestnuts roasted by TEd Sawchuck @ 08/15/2007 3:44 PM

I just bought “Lying Liars” by Al Franken at Dollar Tree. Have also found gems in the Barnes and Noble bargian section. And Wal-Mart’s five dollar DVD is hot right now, got Road to Perdition, Escape from New York SE, The Doors SE, always worth a look when I go there

Chestnuts roasted by Zorak33 @ 08/15/2007 6:32 PM

i finally have an awesome deal that i can talk about, so i am writing in the no longer currently current thread. i signed up for an amazon.com visa card which means that on your first purchase you get 30 dollars knocked off it. So I picked up the entire complete set of the office UK and then also the two disc special 20th anniversary edition of the transformers movie. I got all of this for 25 bucks, I felt like such a badass afterwards its ridiculous, and it’s not even that incredible of a deal. Not like 20 bucks for something that is 2000, but it did make me feel good when the next day I went to walmart and they only had the first series of the office uk for 28.

Chestnuts roasted by FOB danny @ 08/16/2007 2:05 AM

Long-time lurker, first time posting here.

I scored a Sega Dreamcast w/ 2 controllers, 1 VMU and several games I found on Ebay. I think I paid around $40 including shipping.

I’m always looking around the local flea markets and antique stores, hoping to find something interesting or valuable. One day I found a Commodore Magic Voice Speech Module for $2. Knowing how crazy some people are about retro gaming, I checked out Ebay, and found them going for 30-40 dollars.

I found a copy of Beyond Good and Evil for the Gamecube for $15 on Amazon, when they cheapest I could find them for was $30 and up.

Yesterday I ordered a Spyderco Navigator 2 for 31.96 from Sierra Trading Post. That was a savings of 67%.

Chestnuts roasted by Chris M @ 08/16/2007 7:12 PM

Over the past year, I had been wanting to collect GI JOES…the best ones I had when I was younger got stolen from me and the ones I did have I gave to my friend in high school assuming there would be a Battle Beast trade.

But at the beginning of June, I went to my friends store and he had a bag of GI JOES for 5$. Of course, it was parts and I would need O-rings to assemble them and a few would need new parts.

But it had Gyro viper…Secto Viper and so forth.

Chestnuts roasted by Aoecean @ 08/16/2007 10:09 PM

My work was having an “employee” clearence sale on humidifiers, I got one that goes retail for $189 for 15 bucks. I don’t even know if I’ll end up using it, but who could pass up that deal?

Chestnuts roasted by sugar @ 08/17/2007 9:25 AM

There is a local Amish auction near my home where you can hap-hazardly dump all the crap you no longer want. When the outdoor part is through, anything left on the grounds is free to all us scavengers.
One day, I saw this big ol’ brown ceramic plate. I thought it would look nice on the kitchen table. I put it in my car and it says “Tiffany & Co.” on the back.
After some research, I find that this plate was part of a line of dinnerware that was recalled & destroyed due to possible lead paint contamination. There aren’t many out there that haven’t been smashed & replaced.
Long story short: I’ll not be returning it to Tiffany’s. I’m gonna keep it (& not eat off of it) until it’s worth beaucoup dollars.

Chestnuts roasted by AspireTilDeath @ 08/17/2007 9:58 AM

Around X-mas about 8 years ago, I went to an old True Value hardware store looking for a X-mas tree stand and as I passed through one of the aisles, I noticed the familiar look of carded Star Wars figures out of the corner of my eye. I stopped and sure enough, there were 10 carded Kenner Empire Strikes Back figures hanging on a peg rack like it was 1980. I couldn’t believe it! I actually started shaking a little. I pulled the first off the shelf and the little red price sticker read $1.18. Also lying on the bottom shelf was an unopened Dagobah playset — with a $3.00 tag. I grabbed them all, paid for them (it was under $20 with tax). I put the toys in my car and proceeded to serach every inch of that store for more old toys and junk. The old guy working there asked if I was looking for more Star Wars stuff, I said “hells yes!” and he informed me that what I bought was all of it. It had actually only been on the shelf for a few weeks as he had found the stuff when they renovated a storage room. He figured no one would want to buy toys that were 20 years old, so he marked them way down.
It was unreal.
Also, a co-worker of mine went to a locally-owned grocery store several years back when they were going out of business and selling their shelves and fixtures and stuff. He went in and there was a floding table with a stack of Star Wars 12-backs, about seven or eight of them. He paid .25 a piece for them. He displayed them in his tv room for a while but finally sold them for lots of money. His deal is better than mine.

Chestnuts roasted by JoeMike @ 08/17/2007 4:56 PM

I bought a blanket in fairly good condition at a yard sale for 20 cents. That blanket lasted me nearly 8 years. It sounds pretty lame, I know. Especially compared to JoeMike’s friend’s deal.

Chestnuts roasted by Sabi @ 08/18/2007 4:00 PM

I was at an auction where the attendance was sucky, and ended up getting brocade jewelry box full of vintage costume jewelry, silver jewelry, and yes, antique gold jewelry for all of $5!

Did I mention I’m hooked on auctions now?

Chestnuts roasted by Poseid @ 08/20/2007 4:33 PM

A month before Mother’s Day, my company picked up an association of jewelers as a client. What’s better than a diamond necklace for the wife on Mother’s Day? A diamond necklace you picked up for 70% off. 70 motherfuckin %!.

Chestnuts roasted by Chris @ 08/21/2007 3:33 PM

When I was a kid back in the late 70′s there was a great toy store called Toy City, since it was a few miles away and we didn’t have much money growing up, we rarely went there. I was really into building models and they had a huge aisle of them so I saved all my lawn mowing money and planned a bike trip there.

When I arrived the store was in disarray with stuff sitting out in the aisles, I figured they were just rearranging it so I started digging through the model kits. What I didn’t know was that the store was going out of business and I’d arrived on, or nearly on, the last day.

A manager came over and asked me to take as many models as I wanted for 25 cents each, I think I had around 7 to 10 bucks on me which was about 40 model kits!

They brought out those HUGE plastic sacks and filled them up but I had so much there was no way I was going to ride my bike home. Since my parents didn’t know what I was up to, I had to walk the whole way with bags of models hanging off the handlebars, sissy bar, and seat of my bike.

At that point in my life, it was the best deal ever.

Chestnuts roasted by Mikey D @ 08/21/2007 10:58 PM

Went to a “flea market” that consisted of a small storage building full of crap run by a morbidly obese fellow with an aversion to wearing shirts, and scored a 2600 and about 40 games, including a blue label Demon Attack cart, for $9.

Best garage sale score was a Sony portable reel-to-reel recorder, Polaroid Pro Pack camera with half a pack of film still in, and a decent super 8 camera for a grand total of $15.

Chestnuts roasted by BillJax @ 08/23/2007 12:21 PM

Back when I worked @ Electronics Boutique, I made mention to customers, in passing, that I enjoyed playing Magic: The Gathering. A customer came in one day and made mention that he was looking to dump a few cards he had collected over the years. I wasn’t one to pass up adding to my collection, so I asked him to bring them in.

As I perused the batch of mostly revised and earlier cards (read: older) I noticed a couple cards of the name “Sinkhole”. Rare cards, indeed. At that time, they sold for ~30$ per. The kicker, however was nearing the end. With around 15 cards to go, I found a Mox Sapphire. O.o At that time, a mox sapphire was selling for ~$200, so I asked the guy how much he wanted for the set, all the while attempting the best poker face I could muster.

Ten Bucks.

I jumped at the chance.

Some of you may give me hell for taking advantage of the situation, but of a seller does not do his homework, that isn’t my fault!

BTW, in a turn of profit, I sold the 2 sinkholes to my co-worker for $40, so I REALLY made out like a bandit that day

Chestnuts roasted by Lawndart @ 08/23/2007 2:04 PM

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