Day: December 14, 2004

Remember the good ol’ days? Tastykakes came in waxed paper … Soda came in bottles … Concert tickets were $7.50 for General Admission … All this before there was shopping online … You used to go out to the stores during the holiday season and try to pick up the things that everyone you knew wanted … If it wasn’t there, you could talk to a shop keeper and possibly arrange for a date and/or time to return to find the product you wanted … That’s not how it is anymore … Now, the hottest selling item is bought up before it hits the shelves and it’s posted on eBay for a ridiculous profit … Friend of mine two years ago made a killing with those little tiny remote control cars … Whenever he traveled, he stopped in every place that sold them and bought them all up and sold them individually on eBay (the only place you could get them nearing the holiday) …

So my son wants this ATM Bank thingamajig that’s sold out everywhere … My wife stresses when she can’t get the boy what he wants for Christmas … so she has everyone checking every store they go to to find out of they have this item which costs a little under $25.00 … Can’t find it, can’t find it, so she starts looking online … Welp, my first solution is Amazon.Com … They’re sold out … So I said to her that it must be pretty popular to be sold out on Amazon … So a day or two goes by, and she continues to look … She’s even using the computer while I’m not around (That’s an incredible feat for her … she doesn’t use computers at all, and you’d think with all the computers around here, well, that’s a topic for another post) … So she informs me that all these sites have the thing, but most of them link to Amazon (I guess with a referring link to make their percentage) or eBay … So I’m like, let’s cut to the chase and go right to eBay …

Yup, there they are, on eBay … averaging $59.99 Buy It Now with $12-15 shipping … There was one on there for $45 but it disappeared while we were looking through the various ads and the locations of where these things were coming from … We have to be concerned on the amount of time it will take to get here … After all, 11 more days? So it looks like the bulk of the hoarders are in Washington State, but I found good ol’ Discount Danny in Massachusetts was offering a $24.99 item for a whopping $59.95 discount … So we ordered it, and are paying $71.90 to have that thing arrive at our door … In the field to add additional comments, I almost entered in: “Not such a discount, huh Danny?” … But the wife was happy I didn’t … She thought they would be vindictive and send the item late …

Remember for Halloween you used to make your own costume and stay out until like 9 or 10pm? Around my house, it’s about an hour long and is done before prime time … You can get your costume online now too … I bet Discount Danny sells them … at a discount …