I guess the loss of Greatmodels as competition made a difference after all

I too was surprised at the Black Friday/Cyber Monday deals, or lack thereof...  last year was much, much better for steal-deals.

Guess some folks are jaded. On thanksgiving night, I ordered the following from Squadron for our club contest (Valleycon 23 in Chicopee MA on 24 March) raffle at an average savings of 70% off MSRP:

1/35 Academy  M7 Priest

1/35 Academy  USMC M50A1 Ontos

1/35 Academy  US Machine Guns  

1/35 Academy  Pzkfw IV  

1/35 AFV Club  M18 Hellcat

1/12 Atlantis Figure Zorro  1/32 HobbyBoss  IL-2 Sturmovik

1/24 Heller  Suzuki RGV500 1/72 HobbyBoss  P-40B/C Hawk-81

1/72 HobbyBoss  F-84E Thunderjet

1/72 HobbyBoss  Me 262A-2a

1/72 HobbyBoss  F-15C Eagle $

1/72 HobbyBoss  UH-60 Blackhawk

1/72 HobbyBoss  F9F-2 Panther 1/24 Revell  Ferrari Cali

1/35 HobbyBoss  Land-Wasser-Schlepper

1/35 HobbyBoss  T26E4 Pershing

1/48 Italeri  F-86F Sabre Jet

1/35 Trumpeter  USMC LAV-C2

1/24 Revell  Shelby Cobra 427

1/35 Trumpeter  ASLAV-25

1/350 Trumpeter Ship USS Cole DDG-67

1/72 Zvezda  Junkers Ju-88A

Plus the new M42 Duster for me

Squadron's black friday sale was legit...the thresholds for discounts were higher than last year, which tells me they probably got absolutely hammered last year. 

But still - 50% off on all orders $500 and up means if you hit $500, you pay $250. A lot of money, yeah, but if you anticipate it and set aside, you can rack up some amazing deals. 

Though I'll agree, Sprue Brothers has been weak of late.

I agree with you Doogs it has been dissapointing Spru's super specials haven't been that good this year . Maybe tojo is right no more Great Models so less compatition.               ACESES5

Agreed.  I loaded up my cart at Squadron in anticipation of a sale similar to last year's.  When it finally went live, I was dissappointed and ended up purging most of my cart save for Eduard's SU-27, Airfix's Lightning and a Dragon armored jeep w/bazookas and some assorted accessories.   I had a lot more in my cart before the sale started.  Sprue and Lucky weren't much better.  Lucky offered nothing worth whille and Sprue only had that 15% off AM accessories (Okay, I did stock up on some Aires resin and Eduard PE....) .  All in all my wife was much happier this year than she was when I went on my squadron bender last year.

Time travelers: Only 351 shopping days ‘til last Xmas.

I ordered a couple of items from Hobby Link Japan and a big pile of 28mm gaming figures. There were a couple of items at Sprue Brothers and Dragon USA Online that piqued my interest but didn't order them. Squadron seemed out of stock on every kit I've been looking to pick up.

BTW Squadron is still running a series of sales up to Dec 21- different items every day.  

I've been thinking the same thing. Sprue Brothers didn't  much of a sale at all. Squadrons was a joke too. I thought it was stupid that you had to buy $500 worth of stuff Before you could get the discount.

bilbirk

I've been thinking the same thing. Sprue Brothers didn't  much of a sale at all. Squadrons was a joke too. I thought it was stupid that you had to buy $500 worth of stuff Before you could get the discount.

Why was it stupid? 

Last year's threshold was what, $300 to get 50% off? I gathered based off some communications after the sale that they were totally swamped by it. Some glitch or something kept the Tamiya 1/32 P-51 in stock long after they'd sold out, but they honored the discount price and shipped them as they came in.

So this year they bumped the threshold. And they're still rewarding those who buy the most stuff from them, which is pretty basic stuff for a business.

bilbirk

I've been thinking the same thing. Sprue Brothers didn't  much of a sale at all. Squadrons was a joke too. I thought it was stupid that you had to buy $500 worth of stuff Before you could get the discount.

You could get a minimun of 25% off for orders $1-300. I ordered $75 or so worth of stuff and got 25% off. Good enough deal for me. And I would have ordered more but like others said, they were out of stock on alot of the stuff I was looking for.

Two things: you didn't have to spend $500 to get a discount. You had to spend that much to get the maximum discount of 50%, but every order got at least 25% off.

Second, the thing to do is to plan ahead. Since you can guess that Squadron will do something similar next year, get together with a couple modeling buddies and combine your lists. That way, you don't need to spend the whole pile of cash out of your own pocket. You figure, you and four buddies - that's only $100 each to reach the %50 off level. Everyone wins!

I agree, not a whole lot that interest me this year with holiday discounts.

I agree that sales have been kind of wimpy all over. I also noticed a limited selection of Christmas decorations too.

I look at the bright side:  I'm so  broke a sale doesn't even matter! No sense getting bent out of shape about it when your budget is $0!

Well I picked up ALL the following kits for slightly more than a hundred bucks for all of them on Hobby Link Japan's Cyber Monday sale so I for one am not complaining:

And I paid more than that for the 1/350th Enterprise but the darn thing is over a yard/meter long so how could I resist!?!?!

I nabbed three old Bandai kits for $20, after some heckeling. When I went to that Hobby shop i noticed the prices were raised... considerably. Doesn't help that there's the stupid California sales tax... grrr...

Well, Squadron is running a post-doomsday sale   with 30% off everything ending on 12/23 at noon CST. 

Sadly again no back orders and everything I want is out-of-stock...

Last night I ordered four kits from Squadron and saved $52!

Mike

i ordered 4 also but, after taking the 30% off had to find a 5th one to break $150 (the horror). plus the internethobbies PLAN carrier for $105 and an M-706 from squadron for $13. i hope in get reincarnated as a model builder so i can finish my stash.