You expected 40% off. Maybe 50%. The kind of discount that makes you feel clever for waiting, for holding items in your cart through November, for setting calendar reminders.
You got 20%.
The same 20% discount you ignored last month because it wasn’t special enough. The same markdown that shows up every few weeks with different seasonal graphics. The only thing that changed was the banner: black background, red text, countdown timer.
The math doesn’t math
I shop for board games and miniatures—a hobby that makes you obsessive about pricing because everything costs too much. When Black Friday arrived, I ran the numbers on my wishlist.
Almost every “sale” matched previous discounts. Some were identical to the everyday price for store members. A few items cost *more* than they had in October, now wearing a “LIMITED TIME” badge.
Turns out my experience is the experience. WalletHub found 36% of Black Friday items offer no savings versus pre-sale prices. The real discounts? They average 24%—standard sale territory. A UK study tracked 175 products and found zero hit their lowest price during Black Friday. Prices during “Black Week” ran 8% higher than their cheapest point in the prior three months.
Black Friday has become an event about spending, not saving.
One pattern broke through
A handful of deals did deliver. They shared a single characteristic: they came directly from manufacturers and creators.
Game publishers are clearing stock. Miniature designers running annual sales. The people who control the base price and don’t answer to retail partners. They offered 40%, 50%, the discounts I’d expected everywhere.
The resellers and third-party stores? They wrapped normal operations in urgency theater. Exact prices, new graphics, countdown timers suggesting scarcity that didn’t exist.
Why this matters beyond my hobby
The Black Friday erosion isn’t unique to board games. The CNBC headline this year: “How retail’s biggest event became a letdown.” Deloitte surveys show shoppers planning to spend 4.3% less this year—the first drop since tracking began. People are catching on.
Retailers discovered that the Black Friday *brand* drives traffic regardless of actual discounts. The cultural momentum, the media coverage, the fear of missing out—these do the work that deep discounts once did. Why sacrifice margin when the calendar date sells itself?
Shopping without the theater
My approach now:
**Price-track everything.** Tools like Keepa and CamelCamelCamel expose the gap between marketing and reality. When you see that November’s “doorbuster” matches September’s random sale, the urgency dissolves.
**Favor creators over resellers.** Direct sales from manufacturers consistently beat Black Friday retail prices. Publishers, designers, and creators can discount without middleman margins.
**Ignore the date.** The best price is the lowest price, whenever it appears. Waiting for Black Friday means passing up better deals that don’t announce themselves.
Black Friday hasn’t died. It’s just stopped being about the discount. The event continues because retailers need it—concentrated spending, inventory clearance, predictable Q4 numbers.
It no longer continues because shoppers need it. The gap between Black Friday’s promise and Black Friday’s reality grows wider each year. The mythology persists. The savings don’t.