I had been holding off for years buying the James Bond Blu-Rays for several
reasons:
1) I did not have a Blu-Ray player (although that didn't stop me from buying
DVDs back in the late 1990s)
2) Having watched DVD prices finally drop after several years, I felt I
could wait out James Bond on Blu-Ray
3) Only about half of the movies had been released
In the early years of DVDs, I purchased the twenty-two I Spy releases, one
at a time, at twenty-something dollars per release. In those days, DVDs did not
come down in price, even after several years, so I would buy everything at
release, taking advantage of the pre-order discounts offered by Amazon. Then
Best Buy started putting out displays of cheap TV Show sets at around
Christmas, and I got things like WKRP in Cincinnati and How I Met Your Mother
at really good prices.
So I started holding off one some of the immediate purchases. For example, I
bought the last few Mary Tyler Moore releases for $10.00 this past year. The
Adventures of Superman, also $10.00.
Which brings me to James Bond. Having purchased three Blu-Ray films in the
last year to watch in our building's media room, I finally bought a super-cheap
Blu-Ray player so I could watch the extras in my apartment.
After Christmas, I had some time to kill and browsed the $5.00 bin at Future
Shop. There I found two James Bond Blu-Rays. Knowing I could return these if I
changed my mind, I snapped them up. They were the only two available, and I
assumed it was just that store. But when I got home, I checked online, and
every pre-Craig Bond was on for $4.99. Most of them were sold out online, but I
bought another five (free shipping), and the next day made my way to a much
larger Future Shop, where I bought the remaining five.
I did not open any of them, because, during my online research I had also
looked for reviews on the print quality of the Blu-Ray releases. And during
that process, I found a posting revealing that an announcement about a 50th
Anniversary box set was due on January 10.
So I figured I could always return all twelve if the new set had considerably
different content.
The thing is, I realized later that I could have gotten Best Buy points if I
had made my purchase at Best Buy instead.
A couple of days later, I had cause to go to Best Buy to price match a
Christmas purchase. It took the better part of an hour but I got Best Buy
to price match the Future Shop price of $4.99.
An excellent deal, and points to boot.
But I had completely forgotten about Best Buy's policy of giving an
additional 10% of the difference. All of these Blu-Rays were selling at Best
Buy for $19.99, so ten percent of the difference was $1.50. To my great
delight, I ended up paying only $3.49 for each of the twelve releases.
Best Christmas Ever. And I feel this makes up for all of those I Spy DVDs I
paid full price for a decade ago.
On January 10, the 50th Anniversary announcement revealed that a box set
with new extras will be released this year. I decided that I would keep my
$3.49 Blu-Rays and wait out the next few years for the rest to come down to
$3.49.
It's not entirely a matter of patience. I have run out of shelf space. Maybe
it's time to do something about those five hundred VHS tapes.
