I could stop, but (stupidly) it seems I cannot

 Here is the latest in my serious stupid sickness

A quick update on the last post.... a seller had offered me Disorderly Conduct for $3.50 including shipping.   That deal fell through.  The arrival date came and went and all the user had done up to that point was print the label.  I reached out but did not hear anything from them, so I opened up a 'My item didn't arrive' ticket with eBay.  The seller finally replied and said that they couldn't find it but that they would ship it.  But of course the eBay wheels were already in motion, so after a couple of days, they saw that the seller had still not shipped the item and offered me a refund.

Even though I knew I needed to stop buying movies (especially after that crazy Aug 26th run), I had felt the itch to go check the local Big Lots and Goodwill stores for some good deals on movie pack multi-packs. I resisted for a week, but the itch got the best of me the other day.  I was coming back from lunch with my co-worker and decided that 'since it was on the way home', I would stop at the Fairfield Big Lots and Fairfield Goodwill since they were right next to each other.

I first went to Big Lots first.   Not much there interested me, but I did find a collection called '8-Movie All Action Collection' which was from the Shout Factory which was only $4.00.   Coming from Shout! I knew that the quality was going to be good so that was the easy pick.  I then poked around the rest of the shelves but wasn't finding anything of interest.  I was about to leave when I decided to take a peak on the one side which had CDs one it and noticed that at the bottom there were a few other DVDs.   And there is was, with a $1.50 clearance sticker... Canine Capers, a four movie pack with a dog theme.  I.... could not.... resist.

I then went next door to Goodwill and their DVD (and CD) selection was pretty sad.  I think gone are the days of the massive DVD collections at the Goodwill.  Not sure if they are selling them off to somewhere else or what, but there isn't as much as there used to be.  CDs I can understand, but DVDs are still a strong seller out there.   I did manage to find one collection, Midnight Horror Collection Vol. 1 which was one I had been looking to get since I got the Midnight Horror Collection Vol. 2 at Half Price the other day.

A few days later, I was doing what I should not have been (looking through eBay) and in my 'Of interest to you' section was the Benji 4 Movie collection.  I had seen this before and Benji was dog of the minute back in 1978 so it holds a place in my heart.  And wouldn't you know it, it came from a seller who was doing a 'buy 2 get one free' promotion.  You see where this is going.   So I looked around their site and found a couple others to add to the collection, 'Law & Disorder' which is a collection from Maverick which is a company I have been buying from recently, as well as a Classic War 4 movie collection from Universal.   Those arrived with no issue.

But the itch persisted....

There was another set from Maverick called 'Secrets & Lies' which was the latest item on my list.  So the other day I found someone who was selling it and I picked it up for $6.50.  Not a great deal, but not terrible.  And it arrived as expected (actually a few days earlier than expected).

But still.... the itch... 

Since the Disorderly Conduct offer fell through, I was looking around.  There was one place which had a cheap copy ... but it was from the place that I had had issues with before, SecondSale.  They had shorted me a disc on my Western Trios set and then totally botched half of the sets when I did the double buy 2 get 1 order.

So when I saw that they had Disorderly Conduct at price cheaper than anyone else... and it was part of the dreaded buy 2 get one sale, I knew i was in trouble.  I looked around and found another Maverick set which was on my radar called 'Disturbing the Peace' which was also part of the same sale.

I had put those two things in my cart a few times but was having a hard time finding another item that was part of the B2G1 promo.  

I was trying to be good.  I really was... until this morning.   I reached my goal on my passive income app, so I will be getting $20 in the next couple of days.  Money to burn I guess.   I be lying if I said I had not been doing a little more homework the night before.  I had found some sets that might work to be the third, however I knew I needed to spend time doing extra homework because of the issues I had had before with that seller.  I needed to make sure that the collections I picked each came in one case.   That was the issue last time.  I had three sets that were all multi-case sets and I got shorted on all of them.   They sent only one of the two cases for each of those sets.  They just do too much volume to actually look to see if all the movies are there.  So I got up this morning and did my extra homework.  I was looking at few different action movie sets (something I have been buying alot of recently) but eventually landed on a set called '10 Movie Mega Pack Vol. 2' since it looked like it had some non-action stuff that probably leaned more towards comedies from the 2010s.  So that order cost me $11 I think.

So I still had $9 right, and there were still a few more Maverick set which I had been wanting, Feel the Heat and Misbehavior.   So I poked around an found a few copies.   Thankfully (?) I found a couple which had a 'Best Offer' option, so I submitted some offers, both which were pretty low to be honest, but it doesn't hurt to ask and the seller can still give a counter offer if they think that price is too low.   As I was writing this, I got a counter offer on feel the heat and I accepted, so I'll be getting that one for $6.75 (I was aiming for $6).  I guess we'll see what happens with the other offer.  I offered $7.50 on a $11 copy of Misbehavior.  Hoping to pick this up for less than $10 if I can.It would be fantastic if they just accepted, 'cause who else is going to want that set other than some collector guy with impulse buying and completist and 'quantity over quality' issues.  (Edit: They declined the $7.50 offer, so I submitted a $9 offer which they accepted.  It was free shipping so all in with tax it was $9.75.)

The 4 Movie Marathon sets seem to be pretty decent, so I had also been doing some additional research on those.  The only ones which really caught my eye were the westerns.  I have a few of the movie marathons sets;  one western, the newly purchased classic war, and (quite by accident) a holiday collection which I got for the wife several years back to get 'Christmas in Connecticut'.   I put some of the western collections on my Amazon list since my birthday is coming up. 

A crazy (stupid) day... and some other stuff

 

Here is a couch.   More on that later.

One would think that after my last post, that I would be done collecting stupid movies.   But, no.  Here I am with another post probably only a few days after the last.

It was August 26th, 2023 and I was kinda waking up on a Saturday morning.  There was a 10 movie pack that was on my mind ... High Octane.  It had some action movies and a decent cover with some cars on it so it intrigued me.  I had seen it before and I knew it didn't cost that much, so I went on eBay to take a look.  Whilst looking for a good price on High Octane, I tripped over another 10 action movie pack from the same maker (Maverick) called Full Throttle, which also had cars (and girls) on the cover.  I was still feeling guilty about all the other movies I had just purchased, but I said what the heck and purchased them both for about $6.50 each.  

Later on it was about lunch time and the Mrs was looking to go out to lunch.   I had mentioned going to Half Price Books the other day and I had also wanted to go the other day but we hadn't gone even though we we right next door.   So when she came into the living room I said 'Let's go.  I want to go and you want to go, so let's just go.  We can get lunch at Firehouse Subs next doors.   So that's what we did.   After eating lunch at Firehouse (iirc I had a brisket and cheddar sub with jalapenos and it was good), we walked next door.   I immediately took a right and went straight to where the clearance DVDs were.  Immediately I spied a 4 movie pack with some older Universal westerns for two dollars.  Mine.   I crept my way through the rest of the rack and had four different movie sets, all at two dollars each.  I then went back to the beginning to see if had missing any and sure enough there were three multi-packs right around the area where that first westerns pack was.  All of them at two bucks and all of them looking interesting.  I then went over to the LP clearance section (which is also on the floor) and worked my way through those.  I found a pretty nice copy of a K-tel record that we had when I was growing up called 'Dynamic Sound' which was also two dollars, so I picked that up as well.

So that was 9 multi-packs I had purchased in one day.  And you would think that would have been enough, but then it was in the evening and we were watching YouTube videos as usually and I had finished playing all the games on my mobile phone and started perusing eBay again.   I was curious what other sets Maverick had out there and found out that there were quite a few.  I took a mental note of several, but the tripped across another one with cars and babes on the cover called Pure Adrenaline... and I purchased that as well.   So that was 10 movie packs purchased in one day which is ridiculous.

The next day I put together and eBay search for the Maverick sets which looked interesting to me.  Obviously, I had to look at many listings to see what the cover looked like, what movies were on them, etc.   And of course eBay tracks this stuff and certain eBay sellers pay to see who looks at their listing.  With this information, sometimes seller will reach message people and offer them a better price on an item they were looking at.   And of course, 4 days later one of the sellers sent me an offer on a set called Disorderly Conduct with a price of $3.50 with shipping included.  I didn't think very long before I clicked the Accept Offer button.

That brings us up to date with my most recent movie purchase.   

In other news, we bought a new couch yesterday.   It should be getting delivered today.   We bought our current couch not long after we moved to Hamilton.  It was a fairly inexpensive couch (and love seat).   Over time the springs in it started getting a bit weak.  About a month ago, I was sitting down and there was a terrible sound of metal breaking.  My big butt had broken one of the springs.  So for the past month I've been sitting even lower and kinda to one side and it would make a horrible creaking sound when I would sit down and I was worried that one day they were all just gonna break.   Money is quite tight at the moment and on top of that we are trying to save (poorly) for a 7 day sprint break to Florida in 2024, so I was trying to make it work.  But I had been keeping my eye on a couple of sofas that were on the Big Lots site.  After dinner on Friday at the Twin Dragon Chinese Buffet, we went to Big Lots right next door.   They had a fairly large furniture section right as you walked in and of course the Mrs and I started talking about the couch.  I looked and eventually found the one which was 'in our budget'.  It is from Ashley's budget label.  It looked good so we sat down and it was nice.  We didn't nearly go straight to the floor like our current one does.  And we pondered and talked for quite a while.   Eventually I decided that it would be worth it to get just the sofa with the plans that if Maryann's craft shows do well that we would purchase the matching love seat.  The next morning I signed up as a 'new' Big Lots member to get a 15% off discount.   'Same Day' Delivery was $99 (which is funny because even though I ordered it at 7am on Saturday morning, it pretty much was telling me that it would be delivered on Sunday.  So much for same day.)  All in it was $465.   I figure if it lasts us six to seven years like the last one, then it will be worth it.  Maryann pointed out a little bit later that it was Labor Day weekend which is a common time for stores to run furniture and mattress sales.  Funnily enough, Big Lots was having a sale on Broyhill furniture and ALL reclining loveseats and sofas.  Sadly, even with the sale, all of those options were (I my opinion) out of our budget.  I was trying to keep the sofa under $400.  With the 15% off it came out to $339.  It's gray like our old couch so the current loveseat (whose springs are still functioning like they should) should look okay next to it.

Edit: The couch arrived with no issue.  It is a well built couch, though it is certainly a bit firmer than our previous couch  which would practically swallow you due to beaten down cushions and weakened springs.  It is going to take a little getting used to.

I've babbled on long enough.   Here's a some pics of the purchased goods.