Firearms Friday: ‘Tis The Season For Deals

This time of year it seems that everything is on sale. While some deals are better than others, you are pretty much guaranteed to receive some kind of discount on whatever you order. And these sales are not just limited to the national retail chains or products with general consumer appeal, there are even deals to be had for those of us that enjoy the shooting sports. Having written about this before, in one form or another, you can basically consider this as the annual lock and load post.

As many of you have experienced, especially over the last few years, some retailers have better deals than others. While I won’t call out any websites or stores, we all know which ones to avoid. However, there are always great prices on a variety of items with some being sent to email subscribers, Facebook followers, and others exclusive to club members or existing customers. There are also great sites such as Slickguns that make it easy to find the prices that are just too low to pass up. Keep in mind that these sites usually don’t include local gun shop deals.

Over the past couple of months there have been a number of deals that caught my attention with the majority of them being discovered first in my email. Here are a few examples of the tempting products with retailer, item, and sale price included for reference:

• Palmetto State Armory (Daily Deal) - 7.62 x 39 Complete 7.5” Upper (with BCG and Charging Handle); $269.99

• Sportsman’s Guide (with Double Discount coupon) - S.W.T 30 Round AR15 Magazines: $5.59 - 30 Round Beretta 92 Magazines: $11.99

• Delta Team Tactical (Black Friday / Cyber Monday) - Crosshill Tech / Davidson Defense Right Side Charging AR15 Upper Receiver (with BCG): $239.99

• Damage Industries (50% off sale) - AR15 Short Barrel Muzzle Break and Sleeve: $34.95

• Amazon (Flash Sale) - Stack-On PDS 500 Drawer Safe: $31.99

Basically, anyone who is looking to build an AR has had a heck of a time and saved a lot of money recently. Some of these are more recent than others but not all of them were Black Friday / Cyber Monday prices and that is the most important point that I can make in this post. Sometimes the best prices are not during the holidays, they can really happen at any time. The key to finding a good deal is waiting (and getting to know your local shop owner) but sometimes, especially recently, the deals seem to just happen and if you’re paying attention, and didn’t spent too much somewhere else, you can take advantage of them.

Holiday Shopping

Because I haven’t had enough to do lately, I have also been looking around and taking care of some holiday shopping. In addition to the “Black Friday” and “Lightening Deals” that are found all over now, there have also been some moments over the past couple of months when better deals were found. And some of those discounts didn’t even require haggling like at Raymour and Flanigan. At this point, because we started so early, we are basically done our holiday shopping. We have either already ordered or picked up gifts or we know exactly what we are getting for some people.

Of course, that has only been half of the purchasing equation lately as many of our orders haven’t been for others but rather for things that we need around the house. Furniture obviously being the biggest of these expenses which would have cause a coronary had we not known the total beforehand and certain death had we not negotiated a decent discount. Most of the other exciting things have been replacements for what was obviously worn out and we had been putting off purchasing until now.

While there is a little more of a sense of immediacy in these orders, especially for our kitchen, I was still able to wait on a number of items and get really lucky on others. Most of the effort was actually in scanning through the Amazon “lightening deals” while keeping a slightly open mind as to brand and style. We managed to get a lot of the things we need for a significantly lower price than we were expecting to pay and, in most instances, the quality of the product was much better too.

With all of this said, there is a word of warning that I would like to share with you. While most of you are aware of this fact, the reality is that Black Friday and Cyber Monday aren’t always the best days to find deals. I spoke with one retailer who specifically said that those days might be the worst times of year to find deals as they already know people are going out to shop so they specifically offer a smaller discount compared to other holidays throughout the year (President’s Day was mentioned as an example). My response to this and my advice is simple… keep shopping around, track the prices of what you are looking to buy, and never be afraid to either price match with another retailer or haggle them down beyond the sale price.

We are all watching our pennies and, like taxes, why pay more than you absolutely have to… a good rule of thumb is to never accept a discount less than 40% during Black Friday sales. This is the generally accepted bar for a good deal. If you take your time, shop around, get to know some retailers and salespeople, and sometimes price match, you can get the best deal no matter what time of year no matter what you are buying. It really is that simple.

Psycho Cyber Monday

Over the last couple of days I have done a bit of online shopping to fill out the rest of the gifts my wife and I have been meaning to pick up for the holidays. It was also a good time to pick up the Secret Santa (or as I call it the Hidden Hanukkah Harry) gift for the person in my office whose name I picked out of a bowl last week. While we were limited in our gift giving last year and we still are this year as well it seems as though the discounts are significantly steeper this year than in any other year I can remember.

Between general coupons and sale prices on specific items the prices seemed to have been at least 50% below the usual cost. Some items were around 90% off. Maybe they were last year’s style or a step behind in the evolution of technology but it doesn’t bother me and you really can’t tell unless you study the products over and over again. So while we may have gone into this shopping season thinking that we were going to spend a bit more, it looks like the budget will remain relatively the same.

One of the interesting things that came about this season is the announcement byAmazon.com regarding the future use of drones for thirty minute delivery. While it is interesting to hear grand ideas being proposed, some would even say a little nuts, it make you wonder if these people have really given enough thought as to the logistics of such a project. In this particular instance, beyond the FAA, regulation, and security issues surrounding such a drone program what is the communications network going to look like to support this endeavor? Based on my experience, this is something that would need a kinetic mesh network (look it up, it is the best option).

It’s the same mentality that overcomes many people during this holiday season when people head into the retail trenches with grand ideas of getting the best possible gift while spending as little money as possible. Inevitably, somewhere along the line, if the right systems and limitations are not in place all those good intentions seem to evaporate. The timing has to be right, the mentality has to be ardent, and the finances have to make sense.

But, if everything is in place, and the right steps are taken, these kinds of grandiose endeavors can be successful and tremendously profitable. Think about the meeting of these two worlds. Image sitting on the train on your way home. You place an order for an ink cartridge you need to get some work done that night. You select the 30 minutes delivery option and by the time you get home you are ready to go. With such a sharp increase in the success of online and mobile sales, the hyper-expedited shipping option could be a game changer in future holiday shopping seasons.

However, I worry. Essentially, the greatest beneficiary of such a program would be the consumer while the greatest liability to such a program is the consumer. If someone is willing to tase a fellow human being in a store I doubt they would have any issue with taking out a drone.