Tag Archives: bargains

…but then I’d have to live with myself……..

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Scene: Local gun shop

Him: Hey, we’re getting a buncha used guns in later
Me: Awesome. Lemme know when they arrive.

:::Hour  later:::

I show up an start sifting through the stack. He says theres a Ruger 556 in there. I find an AR-pattern rifle, but its the Ruger 762. Ok, he mixed up the Ruger 556 for the 762, I can see that.

Me: Hmmm…..What’ll you take for the PTR-91 and the Ruger 556?
Him: :::mentions price::::
Me: Hmmm…I’ll give you $1500 for the pair.
Him: Sold!

And I trundle off with my loot. An hour or two later, I’m thinking “Man, those SR-762’s are kinda pricey. Lemme look up the price on those.” So I did. And, apparently, a new one goes for around $1500 :::sigh::: I know what happened. I drive back.

Me: Hey, that list of guns that came in. It had prices with it right?
Him: Yup.
Me: Read me the serial number off the list for that Ruger you sold me.
Him: :::reads wrong serial number:::
Me: And the model number?
Him: ::: reads off wrong model number :::
Me: And the caliber?
Him: :::reads of wrong caliber:::
Me: I think you sold me the wrong gun. Let me see your bound book.

Sure enough. There was a Hawkeye in .223 on the list and and somehow the SR-762 got mixed up as that gun.*

Me: Dude, I really hate saying this, but you sold me this gun way too cheap.

And we figured it out. It was a bit of a headache to clean up, paperwork-wise… The Hawkeye, that never left the building, had been entered as sold to me. So, rather than  correct it we just logged it back in as received from me. Easy enough. But…man, a $1500 rifle for half the price woulda been nice.

But….I like the people there and I’d never be able to show my face in there again if they called me and said “We made a mistake” and I said “Too bad.” So…yeah. Mensch.

* = Here’s what happened. I asked if he had any Rugers. He said “I have a 556” which I took to mean he had a Ruger 556. So I grabbed the first AR-15’ish gun I saw with a Ruger logo and it was the SR-762. I figured “He’s not really a gun guy. He thought it was the 556 model because it looks like an AR, he doesnt know the difference between the 556 and the 762 models”. But what actually happened was that he MEANT “I have a 5.56 caliber rifle in the Hawkeye.” A very interesting miscommunication.

Upcoming Friday Of Color

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Black Fridays Matter!

This time next week we’ll all  be hungover from the Friday Of Color sales. Most advertisers will start pimping the sales early, but I fully expect my inbox to be jammed with spam from Stag, Rock River, Kifaru, Augason Farms, Cheaper Than Dirt, CDNN, and all the other usual suspects.

But this time…I’m gonna be ready. I’ve tucked away a a small bit of coin in case something really awesome turns up. (A big ol’ Glock 10mm would be nice.)

I trust that all of you are doing the same…keeping an eye open for a stupidly good sale on that piece of gear you’ve been having your eye on.

Avenues I use to keep on top of the sales include:

  • http://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/
  • http://jerkingthetrigger.com/
  • http://www.guns.com/

The left-leaning, class-warfare types will no doubt get their panties in a twist about ‘consumerism’ and that sort of nonsense. But thats usually the outrage of people who are simply jealous because they can’t partake. Me, I’ve got nothing to be ashamed of…I like cool gear and if I can afford cool gear then, by Crom, I’m gonna buy cool gear. Getting it on sale is just a bonus.

Oh..and there’ some holiday next week too. But, yeah, I’m all about the gear.

Soap

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Despite what you see on The Walking Dead, decent hygiene can make a big difference in a crisis. Ignore, for a moment, no one wants to be squeezed into a pickup truck with six sweaty guys in multicam who smell like the towel bin of an NFL locker room. Think about this, after a long day of sweating, getting dirty, possibly getting some bodily fluids of all sortsa flavors sprayed on you, and the infrequent application of bugspray/sunblock, etc, you wind up getting a decent size cut or abrasion  on you. In TWD our sweaty, grungy heroes carry on effortlessly. In the real world, you’re setting yourself up for all sorts of nasty infection-y badness.

Preparedness is about prevention. You’re stopping problems before they happen. You know how in the winter season we’re all told to wash our hands frequently to prevent catching colds? We all agree that’s a good idea. Well, a shower or some other form of bathing, with soap, on a daily (or more frequent) basis is just as good.

Soap is awesome stuff but it’s a mild pain in the butt to store. I like to use Ivory soap because I can use on my skin, in my hair, and even to clean clothes. It’s sort of a Swiss army knife of soap. Problem is, it is fabulously hydroscopic. Don’t believe me? Go grab a paper-wrapped bar of Ivory soap and peel the wrapper off. I guarantee you the wrapper will be damp, moist, or adhere to the soap in a manner suggesting a high moisture content. And if you leave soap exposed to air too long…it turns into a rock. (Which seems counterintuitive since you would think that if it absorbs moisture it would turn to mush.)

I mention it because while I like Ivory soap, I hate paying for it. Surprisingly, I found a deal on Amazon for 100 bars for $40. (Requires that Yuppie Survivalist luxury – Amazon Prime) Well, a hundred bars oughtta last me a while. So, I ordered ’em up and they arrived today.

thumbnailSo now that they’re here, and we’ve established that they fossilize after long enough time exposed to air, what do we do? Stop exposing them to air. Break the vacuum sealer out of storage and repackage things.

thumbnail2This is one of those situations where a vacuum sealer is great for a task other than storing food. Seriously, if you think they’re just good for putting food away and not much else, you really need to think more creatively. Go get one. You’ll never regret it.

A few years ago I came across a slightly better deal at my local grocery store. Three bars for a buck. I wound up picking up all they had and I packaged them the same way I’m packaging these. I finally used up the last ones last month and they stored just fine, I suppose it’s possible that with enough hot water and scrubbing, the dessicated bars of soap might work, but why take chances?

thumbnailSo, I’m set for the next couple years on soap and can keep myself clean and smelling awesome after a long day of looting burned out police cars, manning roadblocks, and fending off zombies. Or, more likely, I’ve simply knocked off one of many things on my logistical checklist for the next several years.

thumbnail4But, point is, if you’re going to store large amounts of things like food, ammo, toilet paper, and batteries you should also go just as deep on the personal hygiene stuff as well. Being stuck in Katrinaville (Or San Juan, I suppose) is no time for skin infections, bad teeth, conjunctivitis, ear infections, and that sorta thing. Floss, toothpaste, mouthwash, soap, deodorant, washcloth,  toothbrush, talc, a comb, razors (Ivory works for shaving foam), and some hand sanitizer will give you pretty much everything you need to prevent the kinda funk that knocks your efficiency down when you need it the most.

Remaindered meat

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I’ve mentioned before that my local Albertson’s has what I have come to call “remaindered meat”. It’s when the meat is on its last day of “Use By” and the store has to sell it or dumpster it. Since half a (meat)loaf is better than none, they mark it down to either 30% or 50% off to try and blow it out the door. I’ve mentioned this before here , here, and here.

You have to remember, these little sales are, for the most part, completely unpredictable. I could go a week or two without finding something worth buying or I may wind up picking up forty pounds of meat in one week. It’s unpredictable. As a result, when the end of the month rolls around the freezer in my refrigerator might be more than a little full.

A few months back I instituted a policy where all the remaindered meat I pick up goes into the freezer in the refrigerator. At the end of the month, whatever meat is left in the freezer, half of it goes into the big freezer as ‘food insurance’. I’m finding that this little program is working very well for me. When the new month starts I usually have a huge amount of meat still left in the freezer, and my ‘just in case’ supply in the deep freezer keeps improving. As the month progresses, a few more remaindered meat sales wind up in the fridge freezer and at the end of the month half of whats left gets put back.

Today’s score? Bacon wrapped seasoned boneless pork chops, two per tray, in oven-safe foil trays….just remove the plastic and slide ’em into the oven…$5 each marked down 50%, so $2.50. Bought ’em all.

20170821_104729The nice thing is that since it’s all ‘remaindered’ meat, I’m not paying full price for anything. Even if there are no interesting sales for a week or two, there’s still at least that much worth of ‘remaindered’ meat in fridge freezer. As a result, I never have to pay $4.99/# for beef. This frees up money for other stuff, which is part of what survivalism is all about: efficient resource management. I know what you’re thinking “There’s nothing survival related about this! This is a post more fit for a mommy blog about coupon clipping!” No, not really. My point is that you have to eat. Now, you can eat as cheaply as possible by living on a diet of, literally, beans and rice which is exactly what many Third World denizens do. But you are not a Third Worlder. We are meat-eating, gun-toting, flag-waving, moon-landing, Japan-nuking, culture-dominating citizens of the premier First World country. Why live like a Third Worlder if you don’t have to? If you can procure $500 a month worth of food for $250, that frees up $250 to spend on ammo, gear, guns, books, radios, fuel, storage food, knives, gold, silver, etc. And that is most definitely survival-related.

Kerosene and the ghost of Y2K

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Well, I think I’m pretty much done on buying kerosene for the rest of my life. Last time I bought kerosene was here. That was an awesome deal.

Was tooling through Craigslist (when? When will I learn??) and, lo and behold, a fella selling 14 5-gallon drums of kero. For those of you who went to public government schools, that’s 70 gallons. Or, if you’re in a country that never put a man on the moon, 265 liters.

20170801_101755The fella was asking way, way, too much for the stuff so I made him an offer. Wound up getting it for $200…a tad under $3/gallon. (ok, fine….$2.86/gallon).

I  love kerosene…it burns hottest of the liquid fuels, keeps forever with no special treatment, is safe to store, and has a nice market of stoves, lamps, and heaters out there.

My anticipated use? Well, it’s winter for a good chunk of the year here and it would be nice to keep the house toasty in the event of a power outage. Most likely these will go into storage with the last batch of 5-gallon drums I bought. There they will wait until the day when it’s dark, cold, and dreary and I shall have light, heat, and hot food.

Here’s the interesting part… I met the guy, a rather old gentleman who, sadly, was dying of cancer, and as I was moving the cans out of his rather neat and nicely stocked garage I asked him why he had so much of it. His reply was that it was his leftover Y2K stash. Apparently he’d gone long on Y2K stuff. I suspected as much as I looked around his garage and saw the rifle cases, cases of ammo, etc, etc. All the hallmarks of someone who is on the same page. We chatted a bit about the Y2K thing and about how we’d rather have it and not need it, etc, etc. I thanked him for the deal and assured him it was going to a home that shared his concerns and mindset.

I also told him that if he had any other Y2K leftovers he wanted to sell, to please keep me in mind.

So for those of you who wonder how you meet like-minded individuals, there’s another example.

I did the math to figure out how may gallons of kerosene I have in storage and I think I may have actually gone a tad heavier than I planned. I’m going to have to contact a few of the LMI and see if they want some…I don’t think I really need more than 100 gallons for any forseeable emergency.

 

Return of the 10/22 mags

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As I mentioned earlier, they’re back.

20170510_141842-1The Butler Creek Hot Lips 25-rd, smoke colored, 10/22 magazines from January’s big to do have returned. I have 24 boxes sitting here packed up and ready to go. Each box contains 12 magazines, packed loose (meaning no packaging. If they were still in their packaging I wouldnt be able to fit them 12 to a Flat Rate Box).

Price is $110 for 12 brand new mags, including shipping. Email me and I’ll email you back a link you can pay through email. When they ship you’ll get a tracking number so you can follow along. Email me and say “Dude! Me want mags!”

Fortune favors the cheap

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Kinda been having a hankering for meatloaf this week. Thing is, have you seen the prices on ground beef these days? Outrageous. But, I figured I’d hit the remaindered meat bin at my local Albertsons. And, to my surprise, there was this:
20170430_192730Now, let’s do some math. Those are 3# rolls of ground beef. They are on sale at $5.99 per ‘log’. Let’s not split hairs and call it $2/#. They are marked down to 30% off since they need to get it our before it hits expiration. Hmm… lets see how many there are…1..2…3…..10. So thats 10 x 3# @ $2/#, or, another way, it’s 30# of ground beef for $60. That’s a pretty good deal. But….I bet they’d like to get rif of all of it. I wander to the guy in the butchers apron cleaning the meat case.

“Howdy. Is the meat department manager around?”
“No, he goes home at 4pm. Can I help you?”
“Can you point me at someone who has the authority to change prices?”
“I can do it if it’s on something that we already have marked down and today is the expiration date.”

20170430_194556

Achievement unlocked…..

“Excellent. Let’s talk money. If you’ll mark these down to 50% off, I’ll take all of them.”
“All of them?”
“All of them.”
“I can call the manager at home.”
“Awesome. I’ll wait.”

And thats how you get this:
20170430_193104And to put that in perspective, thats 30# of ground beef at $0.998/#. That’s right, less than a buck a pound for dead cow flesh.

How does this relate to preparedness? Well, for starters, my deep freeze now has another 30# of meat in it at dang near Carter-era prices. With ground beef hanging in there around $3.99/# that frees up $90 to go towards other foodstuffs.  These sorts of deals are out there, man. You just gotta look and you can’t be embarassed to ask the manager (or whomever has the authority) if they’re willing to make a deal if you take a big enough amount.

It’s a rare thing for me to feel pride in anything I do, but I am a wee bit satisfied with myself on this one.

Those 10/22 mags…redux

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The bad news: no more of the Butler Creek Hot Lips magazines. 🙁 All gone. Those of you who got some from me know you got a smoking deal, right?

The good news: same vendor just dropped a slew of the Butler Creek Steel Lips mags on me. Obviously they are a bit spendier than the Hot Lips, but very much worth it.

$10 ea, and $12.40 to ship regardless of quantity. The more you buy, the less the mags cost as the shipping gets folded into their price. Here’s a handy table for reference.Untitled2

Email me for a payable invoice.

Remember: Retail is for suckers.