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For two of the last three years, we’ve participated in the bargain hunter’s dream that is Black Friday. It just feels good to blow all your money on a bunch of crap for super cheap prices. So with Black Friday coming up in a few weeks, I thought I’d share our Black Friday stories from the past three years with you all. Let’s take a trip down memory lane!

Black Friday 2005

This was our very first Black Friday together. I had just bought a car a couple of days before, so we made plans to catch some deals on Black Friday. We planned to go to Walmart, although we had no idea what they were going to have on sale. We just assumed that since it was Walmart, they’d have the best deals out of everyone else. Walmart was scheduled to open its doors at 5AM and we arrived at 4:30AM. Yeah, you can tell we were amateurs at this. There was already a line of people, who all had apparently camped out the night before, wrapped around the store.

The parking lot was full. We ended up having to park across the street in the lot of a movie theater. We didn’t even bother to go stand in line as it was freezing outside. We just waited until they started letting people in. Once we got in, it was pretty packed to be only 5am.

I ended up buying a portable dvd player and a stereo, both of which I never used more than once.

Black Friday 2006

Anyone who is a gamer or has kids knows that this Black Friday was a historical one, because it fell on the week that the Nintendo Wii was released. EVERYBODY was after this system. Some for play, some for profit. You see, the Playstation 3 had been released only a couple of weeks prior, and was being sold on eBay for way over retail value. We didn’t know about this fact until AFTER the Playstation 3 was released in stores, so we missed out on getting our hands on one. We knew for sure that the Wii was our second chance. We HAD to get our hands on one to resell!

We found out that a Target near us was going to be selling 20 Wiis as doorbusters, so we made plans to buy two Wiis from there. If I can recall correctly, they were scheduled to open their doors at 7AM, and we got there around 4AM. There were about 10 people already there waiting in line, at 4 freakin’ o’clock in the morning! There was no way we could sit in the car this time around, as we had to hold our place in line. So we bore it out and stood out in the freezing cold for hours… even when it started to snow. When they finally let us in, we bought two Wiis, and we were happy.

All we could think about was the four digit amount that was going to be sitting in our PayPal account after the Wiis sold on eBay. We immediately rushed home to drop them off and went to JCPenney to take advantage of some of their apparel deals. After that, we called it a day. We just couldn’t wait to list the Wiis on eBay.

We listed them that night. And we waited. And waited. I got happy every time I logged in to see new bids. After the auctions closed, I wasn’t happy anymore. One sold for $270 and the other for $290. A mere $60 profit for hours of standing out in the cold. Totally not worth just $60. On top of that, we don’t even have a Wii now, which we’ve both been wanting for a long time. We both now look back on that and conclude, “We’re stupid.”

Black Friday 2007

We had to skip out tradition this time around because I had to work. Yeah, this was a pretty sucky Black Friday.

Black Friday 2008?

We’re thinking about skipping out on this year’s Black Friday too. We have Jayden now and we can’t push our way through wall-to-wall crowds and sit out in the freezing cold for hours like we used to. And I highly doubt we can find a babysitter at 4AM in the morning. We do have plans to participate in Cyber Monday though. We’ve never taken advantage of Cyber Monday (the comfort of being able to sit at home and not having to wait in long lines and freezing temperatures) and instead opted for Black Friday (the complete opposite of what was inside the parenthesis after Cyber Monday) each year. I guess you can just call us “adventurous”.

If you are participating in Black Friday this year, here are some sites you can go to to keep track of Black Friday/Cyber Monday ads from many stores:

BlackFriday.info - For the past two years I’ve had this site bookmarked. They seem to be one the first sites to publish Black Friday/Cyber Monday ads. I also like their Deals section.

DealTaker.com - I keep this site bookmarked because they too seem to be one of first to publish Black Friday/Cyber Monday ads. They also post coupon codes that you can using online during Black Friday/Cyber Monday to save even more.

BFAds.net - I’ve just started to keep a tab on this one. The main factors that pulled me in were the fact that they post sales going on now in addition to Black Friday/Cyber Monday ads, and their giveaway for $2500 in gift certificates, an Xbox 360, a Wii, and a Dell Inspiron Mini 9 laptop.

There’s many other Black Friday websites (just Google “black friday”), but these are the ones that I use.

So, do you participate in Black Friday? What are your plans for this year? Feel free to share your stories!

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