Black Friday 2010 is almost with us (Please post your bargain finds-for all to see)

Retailers are expected to announce Black Friday deals soon (to those of you that hate standing in line at 4AM of BF).

For the entire month of November (until Black Friday), we will be giving away daily prizes every weekday (Monday-Friday) to visitors who enter our 3rd Annual November Holiday Give-Away Contest.

This year the prizes total over $10,000 and include digital cameras, MP3 players, Blu-ray players and movies, GPS devices, video games and video game consoles, a HP dv7t laptop (contributed by HP) and a Dell XPS 17 laptop (contributed by Dell), gift cards and much more! < snip> ___________________________________

Welcome to BlackFriday.info, We are the official site for all of the 2010 Black Friday ads as they are reported to us during this holiday shopping season. As we get closer to Black Friday 2010, we will be posting sale information along with Black Friday ad scans. If you would like to submit Black Friday deals or if you are a member of the media and would like to talk with us about a holiday shopping story, please contact us. < snip >

Welcome to the BlackFridayAds.com 2010 site! We're back for Black Friday 2010! The last kinks are still being worked out of this years site and features, but, the information will starting to trickle out shortly be sure to check back regularly leading up to Black Friday 2010! < snip >

3 Black Friday Deals to Pass Up

http://finance.yahoo.com/family-home/article/111404/3-black-friday-deals-to-pass-up

Nothing works off a tryptophan hangover like a predawn stakeout at the shopping mall in the earliest hours of Black Friday. But those splashy door-busters – the limited-time-only, while-supplies-last, early-morning offers – may not be worth the early rise.
Door-busters can generate considerable buzz. After all, what shopper wouldn’t look twice at a $300 HDTV or a $200 game console? But retailers are using the opportunity to clear out older models — without adding a clearance-sale sticker, which can prompt more thought and inspection on the part of shoppers. Every once in a while, a truly good deal does sneak in, particularly if the sales pitch is for a product that seems close to what you were already looking for.

To separate the good from the overblown, a few rules of thumb: Stores are less likely to offer big discounts on the latest technology, simply because retailers can move these products at higher prices without much fanfare, says Brian Tanis, the founder of sale-tracking site Offers.com. The better values may be hidden in less-talked-about stores, like Meijer or Shopko, or in a slightly more expensive item whose smaller discount and higher price tag are actually a better deal than a lower-quality, cheaper twin that you’ll have to replace sooner. Model numbers for the same product can vary by retailer — on televisions for example, some brands offer different model numbers to membership club stores like Costco (NasdaqGS: COST - News) than, say, to Best Buy (NYSE: BBY - News) — so look at the features to see if the comparison is fair.

Here are three door-busters to skip, and better deals to consider:

1. $99 Sony Blu-ray Player (Models S270, S370)

These players, marked down from $179 in Black Friday ads at Target (NYSE: TGT - News), Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT - News), Walgreen’s (NYSE: WAG - News), and Costco, among others, are billed as offering Internet video, but they aren’t nearly as cheap as they seem. They’re Wi-Fi ready, rather than coming with built-in Wi-Fi. You’ll need an $80 adaptor to go wire-free, says Manu Sachdeva, the director of ecommerce for gadget marketplace Retrevo. “On spec it looks great, but most homes don’t have or want Ethernet cables running [from the modem to] behind the TV,” he says. A better bet would be the Sony S570 with WiFi, which Wal-Mart currently has on sale for $158 instead of $250, he says. Although it’s a more expensive player, you’d save $21 on the whole setup.

2. $300 720p HDTVs

Skip the 32” no-name sets on sale for $300 or less at Costco, Wal-Mart, Kmart, Sam’s Club and Shopko – with resolution of 720p, they’re nothing special, says Tanis. On the other hand, at $298, Target’s expected 40” Westinghouse LCD HDTV is a rare bargain. It features cutting-edge 1080p resolution, and it’s the cheapest of the higher-resolution sets in ads for Black Friday. (The next-cheapest 1080p door-buster of that size is a $400 Coby at Shopko.) Experts say the higher resolution doesn’t really pay off in screens smaller than 50” unless you’re sitting very close (less than 5 feet away), so keep that in mind when you’re picking a set.

3. $299 160GB Playstation 3-Game/DVD Bundles

Best Buy has a bundle with two games (Little Big Planet and ModNation Racers) and one Blu-ray movie (Cars, which came out in 2006), while Sears (NasdaqGS: SHLD - News) has one with one game (Uncharted 2: Among Thieves), a voucher for an online game (PixelJunk Shooter) and a Blu-ray movie (”The Karate Kid”). The console alone also sells for $299 and games run between $10 and $70 — so it seems like a good deal on its face. But is a four-year-old movie or no-name game a deal? “Usually the games aren’t the ones that people want,” says Natali Morris, a senior editor for electronics review site CNET. You could wait for a sale or coupon and get a better price — without collecting a game that will sit in your drawer. For example, superstore Meijer has a similar deal on the console, which includes the same extras as Sears but goes a step further with a $50 coupon good for a future purchase. That’s enough to buy a game you actually want to play

Best LCD TV deals to happen after Black Friday

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Best-LCD-TV-deals-to-happen-cnnm-722935765.html?x=0

Ultra-low prices for flat screen LCD TVs are typical for Black Friday. But this year, the best deals are expected to come even later in the holiday season and into early 2011.

The average price for a 42-inch LCD TV is forecast to be $626 this quarter, but the price is expected to fall below $600 in the beginning of next year before rising again, according to NPD Group. Prices for 52-inch LCD TVs are expected to drop by $120 on average during the same time period.

“The prices out there now are very aggressive and attractive, but there will be fire sale-like prices on Black Friday and even further price reductions after Black Friday,” said Riddhi Patel, director of television systems and retail services at iSuppli Corp. “The TV market has slowed down, and there’s no indication of it turning around.”

America is an “LCD TV recession,” with sales falling for six months in a row, said Brian White, analyst at Ticonderoga Securities.

Experts say the lack of demand for LCD TVs is due in part to a high rate of penetration of flat screen TVs in homes. About 56% of U.S. households already have an HDTV, according to Yankee Group.

Sales soared in previous years as people swapped out their old standard-definition tubes for flat screen HDTVs. Even during the economic downturn in 2008 and 2009, flat screens remained a hot buy, with double digit sales growth during the past two holiday seasons, NPD Group found. But now that most Americans own an LCD TV, there’s less incentive to purchase them.

Also, new TV offerings haven’t given consumers much reason to buy one. Internet-connected TVs and 3D TVs are expensive, difficult to use and require awkward accessories like keyboard-remotes or 3D glasses. Backlit LED TVs are thinner with a crisper picture, but they’re not so much of an improvement that consumers who just bought an LCD TV will be willing to upgrade quite yet.

Despite slumping sales, prices have hardly budged this year, and cash-strapped consumers have been holding out for costs to drop.

The scales finally tipped in the buyer’s favor in October, with prices falling significantly — 7% — for the first time in 2010, NPD said. That is expected to become a trend, with great deals advertised for Black Friday.

But experts don’t think LCD TVs will fly off the shelves as a result of good Black Friday deals. LCD TVs only landed at No. 7 on the Consumer Electronics Association’s survey of top wish-list gadgets for the holidays, down from No. 3 last year. Ahead of HDTVs are multi-function items like laptops (No. 1), iPads (No. 2), e-readers (No. 3) and video game systems (No. 5).

“The iPad is going to eat into a lot of discretionary spending during the holidays,” said White. “People only have so much to spend, and they just don’t want to buy TVs.”

That could lead to a glut of unsold TVs, which could lead retailers and manufacturers to slash prices to clear out old products.

“Inventory pressures are building up throughout the supply chain,” said Paul Semenza, senior vice president of NPD Group’s DisplaySearch. “We’ll start to see even more aggressive pricing in a second wave later in the holiday season.”

So if you’d rather let the turkey, stuffing and pumpkin pie digest instead of camping outside the mall at 4 a.m. on Black Friday, not to worry. You’ll have ample opportunity to take advantage of great deals on LCD TVs down the road.

It’ll probably end up saving you money.

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