Ever really shop at Harbor Freight? I get their circular in the mail every
two weeks like clockwork. Each ad is good for four weeks, which means that
they always have two sale fliers that are good at any given time.

I have been shopping and lurking there about six months. Despite my qualms
about buying Chinese they do have good deals occasionally. I buy American
when I really can find a nice product that I would like to have, a
'heritage' tool that I can plan on passing down to my children. (And if I
can afford it.) Another thing is that the Sears stockholders must have
their ROI (return on investment). If you insist on giving the stockholders
15%-20% a year, your tool prices continue to rise faster than the rate of
inflation (and a darn site faster than the rate of my pay raises: 8%
increase in five years.) Anyhow I don't want to get into a flame war - back
to my original comment.

The HF store in my area is about the size of an old time hardware/tool store
sans lumberyard - meaning, with all the stuff they carry, it is jammed to
the rafters (and a disorganized jumble sometimes.) They have a certain
number of items that are on sale at any given time, and I would guess that
those items total almost 25% of the stock items in the store. So, by virtue
of the two advertisements mentioned above, 12.5% of the items go on sale
every two weeks, for four weeks. I would venture a guess that every stock
item goes on sale at least once every four months, going off-sale to the
regular stock price for the remainder of the time. Some items, like thier
$3.99 voltmeters, are almost constantly on sale - well over 50% of the
time. So is it fair to the chap who doesn't watch the ads and gets it at
regular price the day it goes off sale? Is the regular price the sale price
or the stock price if it is always on sale? It is a fact of life.