Liquidation

I read Scenes from a Borders Liquidation Sale on Consumerist just this week about the deals people think they're getting at the stores that are going out of business.

We are trained to flip out over a series of trigger words to the point where without those words, without that perception of a deal (but not an actual deal) people don't spend. I can't believe that all the people there buying today would be doing so if they literally could not afford to. They have the money now, why didn't they have it a few months ago? Because we weren't having a liquidation sale then.

I'm always amazed at how nuts people go over what they perceive is a sale. I wanted to know if the same thing was happening at my local Borders store. Since I found myself with a few minutes to kill before seeing a movie today I popped in.

First of all, parking was a mess. I parked at Longhorn Steakhouse and had to walk over.



Sure enough, once inside I found that the discounts were 20-40% off. 40% seemed to only apply to magazines and comic books, although I didn't walk the entire store to be certain of that assumption. Books were definitely all only 20% off. I went to the YA section and was amazed to find the shelves almost completely wiped out. No Sarah Dessen. A couple Meg Cabot. None of the books on my Amazon wish list were left, near as I could tell. A $7.99 book was only $1.59 less. I wouldn't have bought one even if they did have something I wanted.



$12 for Eat, Pray, Love? I have that Nickel & Dimed book that I bought for a class at an overpriced student bookstore for $9 several years ago!



It's hard to tell but the line was wrapped around the store. I couldn't believe it.



So after the movie I went over to Half Price Books. I bought 2 books from the Uglies series by Scott Westerfeld for$2.48 a piece. No telling how much someone at the Borders liquidation probably paid for them this week.

What saddens me about the loss of two Louisville Borders locations are that they were the company that bought out Hawley-Cooke (those unfamiliar can read about HC HERE and HERE). Hawley-Cooke wasn't perfect and certainly made its fair share of business mistakes when internet giants like Amazon arrived on the scene. But I was terribly sad to see it go. I can't say the same about Borders.