DVD Boxed Sets For The Budget-Crunched, Which Is Just About Everybody

Mad Men: For less than $30, you can immerse yourself in the smoky rooms of Sterling Cooper. Lions Gate

 

by Linda Holmes

Another TV-on-DVD follow-up: When you spend a lot of time putting together recommendations of boxed sets, you can't help noticing that they do represent a big expense at a time when almost everyone, the news tells us, is looking to cut holiday spending.

Presumably, splurge gifts like larger boxed sets are likely to take a hit this year. It's not unusual for boxed sets to cost $200 or $300, which seems like an awful lot to lay out these days. Pamela Goodfellow is a senior analyst at BIGresearch, which gathers information from consumers about buying habits. She agrees that such a set is certainly going to qualify as "an expensive, splurge-like purchase." Not exactly the direction we're all moving.

But of course, plenty of sets are deeply discounted these days — even though that may mean a reduction from $300 to $200. Can a sale price like that move that "splurge-type purchase"?

Goodfellow believes that even with an expensive set, it all comes down to how well the gift fits the recipient and the giver's budget. It wouldn't fit someone who's looking to buy a bunch of small gifts for someone, but it might be an expedient way to get your presents taken care of: "If it's a guy just looking to get their shopping over with, and they've budgeted $200 for a particular person and it fit them, then that might be a great buy."

The good news is that a lot of the big sales can be found without leaving the comfort of your chair, because there's some pretty deep online discounting going on at the moment.

Finding good deals, after the jump ...

Amazon.com is not the only place to buy DVDs online, of course, but it is the most well-known. They're currently holding a Boxed Set Blowout, which is offering big discounts on sets of all kinds.

Examples:

• Ye Olde Sitcomme Store: Full seasons of Friends are around $15, as opposed to the usual $30. Lots of other comedy seasons are similarly priced. If you're feeling really nostalgic and perhaps don't have late-night cable, Three's Company Season 1 is only $5.99!
• Kids on your list? Several volumes of the Looney Tunes Golden Collection are at $24.99, down from a list price of $65.
• Like your serious dramas? The fourth season of Lost is $36.99 instead of $59.99, while the first season of buzz magnet Mad Men is a mere $27.49.
• Price cuts on Great Big Extravagant Full-Series Sets abound as well — normally, you'll pay almost $300 for the full run of The West Wing or Sex And The City, and those are down to more like $143.99 and $99.99, respectively, which might take them from totally out of range to a splurge for the right person. Similarly, full sets of The Sopranos and The Wire are $199.49 and $134.49, respectively, instead of nearly $400 (!) and $250.

There are also non-TV boxed sets included in this sale, including a Gene Kelly collection (with An American In Paris, Singin' In The Rain, On The Town, and Anatomy Of A Dancer) for only $24.49 (instead of $52.98). Similarly, a solid (though incomplete) Astaire/Rogers set can be yours for only about $25.

If you're more attached to theater, here's a heck of a collection of filmed Sondheim performances, too, which would normally set you back almost $120, but is on sale for $53.49.

And if you're sitting on a pile of gold but still looking for deals, an absurdly expansive set of Hollywood musicals is on sale for $257.49, down from $500. (Sure, it's a lot, but there are about 50 movies in it, so on a per-film basis, it's very reasonable.) (I still don't think I'm getting it for Christmas, though.)

And, again, if there's a kid on your list — or maybe a couple of kids who would enjoy a present given jointly — there's a Disney/Pixar collection (Toy Story, Toy Story 2, Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, A Bug's Life, Monsters, Inc., Cars, and Ratatouille) for $109.99, down from a sticker price of about $240.

Again, it's not just Amazon: there's also a boxed-set sale at Barnes & Noble's bn.com. The price drop seems to be a straight 40 percent, which is smaller than the Amazon.com discount in most cases, but there may be exceptions — and prices change all the time, so it's always a good idea to check before you buy.

You may even find deals by looking on eBay, where people sometimes unload DVDs when they're short of cash or space. But unless you're buying still-sealed new sets, you'll obviously be rolling the dice on how well the previous owner has treated the discs.

A lot of these are still sizable investments, but they're substantially more within reach than they appear if you go by list price alone. Look for deals, and you still might be able to please the person who has everything — except every season of House.