Toy deals, from a man with three damn kids

Here's the thing nobody damn well tells you. Toy prices frequently rise during the weeks immediately before Christmas rather than falling, as demand peaks and discounting becomes unnecessary. December is the worst damn time of year to buy a toy. The best is January, when the same product craters, and October, before the seasonal climb starts. So if you're staring at a 20% "holiday deal" on December 18th, that's often 20% off a price that went up in November. We score against the damn history, so that trick doesn't work on us.

How we damn well score toys

Toy pricing is strongly seasonal, with the deepest genuine discounts occurring in January and the shallowest in November and December. A 30% drop in January is ordinary. A 30% drop in November is genuinely rare and scores far higher. We weight rank hard here too, because the toy category is absolutely stuffed with clones — low-ranked toy listings frequently duplicate the design and imagery of higher-ranked branded products. That damn wooden train set at 60% off might be the real one. Might not be. Rank tells you which.

How the Damn Good Score works →