Long overdue.

I've been gone for a long time, and honestly the deals have kind of become stale. There were plenty since the last blog post, so many I don't remember most of them but not as plentiful as when this blog started. I'm going to post the ones that came up most recently and as I dig through all my old gear I will post those as well. We've moved and had two more kids so my time is limited.

Here goes nothing!

Last week Peter and I went to Sams Club after running some errands to pick up water and milk. We always veer off to the left to the clearance section they always stash behind the photo center. Legit, who still uses a photo center? I'm imagining 1 Hour Photo with a creepy Robin Williams to be honest. I haven't purchased a Sams Club clearance item in years to be honest as there really aren't many. It's up to the manager's discretion on how they mark down stuff so you have to be there virtually every day to catch that one deal a month or quarter. It's the approach I used to take with Goodwill and it worked for many years.

We came across several TVs, but this Vizio 43" 4k  HDR model caught my eye since it was barely over $100. It's not a high end TV, but hell it'd make a great monitor in a pinch. I snagged it up, went to the register and purchased it while the cashier's jaw dropped. It's sitting on a stand at home while I figure out what we'll do with it - we tested it and it's basically brand new. The plastic was still on it and the remote had never been opened. The picture is about a $300 worth with contrast that 's not super great but for most people it'd work fine. I played Altered Carbon on it from Netflix and the HDR is a nice touch but nothing to write home about (I bet it's not a 10bit panel, but who knows).

The deal? 5 stars.
The rest? I don't rank anymore as I don't buy to resell. It's just not worth my time.

The next day we went to Best Buy just on a whim to see if there were any appliances or odds and ends that Peter might be able to use since he's building a house right now. There weren't a whole lot of deals but he did come back while I spoke with some past coworkers and mentioned they had pedestals open-box. We went over and there were two white Samsung pedestals for $50 each. We've come across literally a dozen or more of these over the past 5-6 years but they were always mismatched, or we didn't have room, or the wrong brand. We happened to have the wife's Escalade so it made sense to be honest. The feeling of guilt about buying stuff isn't super strong when its cool stuff for your wife, right? We got them home, installed them and made a mess cutting aluminum sheeting as we had to get a periscope to hook the exhaust up. As the old dryer sat the exhaust port lined up exactly with the hookup on the wall. Drats. This was an awesome deal since we now have recovered the space above the washer/dryer and can store whatever underneath. The dumb part? Normal washing detergent doesn't fit in the pedestals. Oh well, towels or something. The best part? You don't have to lean over as much when you pull laundry out and move it to the dryer.

Deal? 5 stars. MSRP was like $250 each.

The last one for this week, arguably the highest % savings but the most useless for me. We went to Target and found these:

We make the rounds on the back wall like any good Target bargain hunter should. That's where all the clearance is. There was a big cardboard box on the bottom that said "Lumisource" or something to that matter. To me that reads "I'm some sort of lamp, because Lumi means light". Well I was wrong. They were 24" stools. I pushed the box back into the clearance pile since our counter is 30" stools and these were 24". Wait a minute, Peter is building a house and I'm pretty sure his counters are lower. So we got them. They were marked $16.xx. I'd say that's one hell of a deal, over 90% off.

Deal? 5 stars xxxx!!!! (ebay ratings) A+++

So, perhaps the next update will be less than 4 years away.