Stocking stuffers that are cheap for a damn reason we can prove

Stocking stuffers are bought in sixes, which means the mistake compounds. Overpaying four dollars once is nothing; overpaying four dollars six times over three stockings is a damn meal out you did not get.

Nobody price-checks a seven-dollar item, and sellers have noticed. This is the band where the phrase "on sale" has quietly become a permanent damn condition, and the only way to see through it is to look at ninety days rather than at today.

What the stuffer band does in November

Inventory in this band roughly doubles from late October as seasonal packaging arrives, and the median genuine discount falls at the same time. More things to buy, fewer of them actually cheap — which is why the count and the median at the top of this page move in opposite directions through the season.

The cap here is $15 rather than $20, and the bulky categories are filtered out, because a stuffer has a constraint a price band cannot express: it has to physically fit. We would rather the filter did the damn work than the reader.