Brad

6 months until Black Friday!

In addition to the 150 Sears/Kmart stores closing, they are also selling the Craftsman brand to Black & Decker: http://www.wsj.com/articles/sears-sells-craftsman-brand-to-stanley-black-decker-1483623215

Might as well start it now so these kinds of posts have somewhere to go. Only 332 days to go

As we do every year, I archived the 2016 Black Friday forum threads. You can view all 13 years of archived posts here: http://forums.gottadeal.com/forum/10-black-friday-archives/ I also created this Black Friday 2017 forum which will remain open all year for whatever Black Friday discussion pops up as well as the few current threads that had activity from the old BF/holiday forums. We'll also use this forum to discuss Prime Day or any other big sale day that the retailers create during the rest of the year. This forum will eventually become next year's main Black Friday discussion board in the fall, so if you want to start earning entries for next year's BF forum posting contest, posts made in here throughout the year will count towards the contest

Merry Christmas

http://www.kohls.com CREDIT EVENT 1/12-1/22 30% off with code COCOA30 CATEGORY CODES $10 off your Intimates purchase of $40 or more with code INTIMATES10. 12/25-1/04. 20% off Ceramic cookware and bakeware with code CERAMIC20. Select styles. 12/25-1/04. $10 off Each pair of men's and women's Rock & Republic jeans you buy with code ROCK10. 12/25-1/04. 20% off Furniture, mattresses, home decor, rugs, curtains, pillows, and storage with code REFRESH20. Select styles. 12/26-1/14. $5 off Curve fragrance purchase of $35 or more with code CURVE5. Excluding gift sets. Select styles. 1/1-1/14. 20% off Juniors and girls 7-16 apparel with code STYLE20. Select styles. 1/2-1/11. 15% off all bedding, mattresses, and curtains with code SLEEPWELL. 1/12-1/22. $10 off $30 Baby & Toddler Apparel, Maternity Apparel, and select Baby Gear with code BABYSALE10. 1/12-1/22. $5 OFF your Britney Spears fragrance purchase of $32 or more. Excludes gift sets. 1/22-2/4. $10 off your Home purchase of $50 or more with code HOME10. 1/27-2/05. $50 off your Luggage purchase of $200 or more with code LUGGAGE50. 1/27-2/05. SITEWIDE CODES 15% off or 20% off $100 or more with code NEW4YOU. 1/3-1/4 20% off with code SHOPFAST. 1/19. 15% off or 20% off $100 or more with code SAVENOW. 1/12-1/18. 15% off with code JAN15. 1/27-1/28.

http://www.kohls.com/ 30% off for cardholders: FROSTING30 15% off or 20% off $100+ for non-cardholders CANDYCANE free shipping for cardholders: KCSHIP4FREE $10 in Kohl's Cash with each $50 spent.

Green Monday sale: http://www.bestbuy.com/site/misc/green-monday/pcmcat748300451084.c?id=pcmcat748300451084 They also have the $25 off $100 by using Visa Checkout again.

http://www.target.com/c/green-monday/-/N-4xwck?lnk=bigdealstodayon&type=products 166 items on sale. anyone see anything good?

https://www.walmart.com/browse/Christmas-Gifts/0/0/?_refineresult=true&_be_shelf_id=5922&search_sort=100&facet=shelf_id:5922 looks like the same sale they've had since early November to be honest...

Amazon has told us (and this can always change) that the current sale prices on their devices: https://www.amazon.com/Amazon-Devices/b?ie=UTF8&node=2102313011 are as low as they are going to go. They are scheduled to last until 12/24. So if you've been waiting for them to go cheaper, these prices are as low as they'll be going most likely.

Giving up on getting one. I didn't really want one too much. Now, if they come out with a SNES version next year, then I'll be all in on getting one

I've only heard back from 2 of the 5 winners so far. Hope the others get on here soon

http://www.gottadeal.com/Deal/146285 in store and online

Just a reminder that the last 30% (and free shipping) of the year for cardholders will be from 12/11-12/24 in case you have rewards that you want to save.

You've been able to in the past when they've had that deal.

I mean, even a huge site like Slickdeals had less than 9,000 posts in their BF forum this year and they have many times the number of members that we do. As BF becomes more "boring" there just isn't as much to discuss year after year. The novelty of the day has worn off - it's why there is much less news coverage when ads get leaked, or when people line up days ahead. Now it's more about that 8 day stretch staring Monday before Thanksgiving and going until Cyber Monday. That's when the deals are and there's a pretty big drop in the number of deals available now compared to last week. And since online deals isn't "sexy" and you can't show funny clips of people fighting to get online deals, there isn't much coverage of it in the media.

It is, which is why we try what we can (contests, etc...) to keep the forum active each year.

If you include the holiday discussion forum (easier to do the math since we archive them all together), last year had about 8,300 posts. This year we're currently around 6,500. Things have been dropping, and it's happening to most forums on all topics as a lot of discussion happens on Facebook now. For example, the main 'Walmart BF ad posted' thread on here had 56 replies. The corresponding post on our FB page had 579 comments.

http://storage.pardot.com/197572/8554/EAN_Kitchen_260x260_12_Days_of_Deals_11.29.16.jpg Themes for each day: 12/4 Kids 12/5 Media/Entertainment 12/6 Entertaining 12/7 Gaming 12/8 Fashion 12/9 DIY 12/10 Travel 12/11 Active 12/12 Tech 12/13 Hobby 12/14 Animal 12/15 Stocking Stuffers

Here's everyone with at least 100 entries: 493 bribri25 406 kanyon71 291 riven3d 186 jaymacfla 151 hanshotfirst 150 bluebear 149 tracy0504 139 bopeep 112 tigger97498 107 jesusluvu 107 elmck

2016 ads have been added to the Black Friday Archive: http://www.blackfridayarchive.com/ I've got the physical BF newspapers going back that far as well. Eventually I want to re-scan those older years to get cleaner copies on the site, but the idea of manually scanning thousands of pages of old BF ads isn't high on the to-do list

sweetdiggity - 14 entries bribri25 - 493 entries bethed - 22 entries tracy0504 - 149 entries sgigi - 2 entries (and they were both for the same post - lucky!)

OK, here is the announcement you've all been waiting for. First, some info: There were 6,847 entries this year which includes the double entries in the "Posted Black Friday Ads" and "Online Black Friday Sales" subforums. The entries were spit out randomly from the database, and then randomized again on random.org. The first 5 to get returned were chosen as the winners. Here are the winners along with links to the actual posts that were chosen as winners: 1337417 - sweetdiggity http://forums.gottadeal.com/topic/268696-best-buy-black-friday-ad-posted/?p=1337417 1335317 - bribri25 http://forums.gottadeal.com/topic/266215-black-friday-live-2016-bigjimslade-update-post-51/?p=1335317 1333982 - bethed http://forums.gottadeal.com/topic/266208-how-do-you-save-for-black-friday/?p=1333982 1337758 - tracy0504 http://forums.gottadeal.com/topic/268693-walmart-black-friday-ad-posted/?p=1337758 1339974 - sgigi http://forums.gottadeal.com/topic/269238-kohls-online-black-friday-sale-discussion/?p=1339974 Congrats to the winners! Look for a PM from me soon to claim your prize. And to everyone else, there's always next time. Thanks for contributing to the discussion

Thanks for the opinions - this is why I posted the thread. Seems like most of you like things how they are which is fine with me.