Easter Aftermath

Lots of people deservedly look forward to Easter. I am among them.

A few of us in the Clark household also find reason to celebrate the days after Easter -- scavenging stores for discounted holiday candy.*

Tonight I took Jared with me a to a few stores, under the pretense of needing a few "groceries" and other sundry items. The stores: Longs Drugs, Ralph's, and Target.

There's a little bit of an art to scavenging post-holiday candy. Generally, in the days immediately following a holiday, stores discount their holiday merchandise (and candy) 50%. As evidenced tonight, at stores like Ralph's and Long's Drugs this hardly amounts to a discount at all -- since 50% the regular price at these stores amuonts to a negligible discount over the sale price before the holiday.** Target's "regular" prices are usually more reasonable, making a 50% discount a bit more attractive.

The trick to scavenging, though, isn't the 50% discount -- it's finding the right candy at the 75% discount. The 75% discount is elusive and usually only shows up after the store is frustrated with its inventory and wants to move it now. When a store does reach that point -- and it's hard to know when a particular store will reach it -- sometimes there's still quality candy left, and sometime there's not. That's what makes calculating the risk/reward of post-holiday candy pricing so challenging.

Obviously this is why timing is key and inevitably seems to require a bit of luck. Ideally you'll visit the store within the first few hours of the change from 50-75%, and certainly within the first 24 hours. After that, any candy left is likely to be the kind you probably wouldn't want even if it was free.

But happening upon a store at the right time in the days follow a holiday can be the stuff of legends -- and some of my posts have borne that out.

As for Jared and I tonight, we weren't in a gambling mood. We settled for some Reese's Peanut Butter Eggs from Target -- still at the 50% discounted price.

* Indeed, you would not be wrong to think the same may be said of the days after Christmas, Valentine's Day, and even Halloween.

** Take the 12 oz. bags of M&M's for example. At Long's Drugs and Ralph's the Easter M&M's are currently discounted 50% off an outrageous $3.50 regular price. At $1.75 a bag, that's only a .25 savings over the $2.00 price from a week or two ago. I refused to buy any as a matter of principle.