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Bargain hunters, start your engines Plenty of great buys await Friday, many of them before dawn By BILL KETTLER Mail Tribune Half-price socks! Ten bucks off Levi's 501s! A $39.99 Holiday Celebration Barbie for free! All these bargains can be yours Friday. All you have to do is get up in the middle of the night and start shopping before dawn. The Friday after Thanksgiving isn't really the busiest day in retailing, but you'll probably think it is if you're out there with the buying throngs. Thousands of shoppers will spend part of today studying the bundle of ads inserted in this week's newspapers, looking for stupendous bargains on everything from socks to all-terrain vehicles. Veteran shoppers develop a strategy to grab the best deals while retaining their sanity. Some shop strictly by the clock, heading for the stores that open earliest. Others plan a loop trip that takes them to a series of stores in a logical order. Those with a limited shopping list target the stores that have the stuff they want at the best prices. The earliest birds will descend on the K-B Toys store in the Rogue Valley Mall for its 5 a.m. opening. Ardent toy buyers who drop a C-note will be entitled to a free Holiday Celebration Barbie - a $39.99 value. If you know a little person who loves Buzz Lightyear and the "Toy Story" characters, you can pick them up at K-B Toys Friday for $12.99 apiece - nearly 60 percent off their original price. Sluggards who want an extra hour's sleep can still make out well. Fred Meyer's well-known sock extravaganza begins at 6 a.m. The store's entire stock of men's, women's and children's socks will sell for half-price until 11 a.m. L'eggs and No Nonsense pantyhose are included. There's more than socks for cheap at Freddy's on Friday. This year's circular describes half-price luggage, leather coats, men's trousers, tools, shelving, and duffel bags. Freddy's also serves doughnut holes and coffee for bleary-eyed bargaineers. If you wait until 6 a.m. to enter the race, you have to decide where to start. Besides Fred Meyer, you can grab 6 a.m. bargains at Wal-Mart, Sears, Michael's Arts and Crafts Store and Toys R Us, among others. Wal-Mart will sell you a DVD player for $74 and change until 11 a.m. Craftsman screwdriver sets are half-off at Sears until 11 a.m. Toys R Us has a Saturn 5-in-1 game table with table-top soccer and other games for $49.99 instead of $99.99. Michael's tantalizes the early bird with a variety of time-specific coupon offers to encourage you to linger in the store all day. At 6:30 a.m., shoppers will be pouring into Black Bird to take advantage of great discounts on Levi's. For four hours, Black Bird will sell Levi's 501s for $22.97, $10 off the regular price. If you want to please a tool guy on your Christmas list, wander across the store to where you can get a genuine Vise-Grip locking pliers for just $6 instead of $12.99. By 7 a.m. most of the big-box stores will be serving up bargains of their own. Target will have super deals on pocket 35 mm cameras ($48) and portable CD players ($48). Meier & Frank will sell selected women's lambskin coats and men's leather jackets for half price until noon. Staples has 20-gigabyte computer hard-drives for less than $50. G.I. Joe's will have selected skis and snowboards for as little as $99. Hard-core shoppers learn to look for the fine print in the circulars. Each store has its own policies for those "doorbuster" deals. Black Bird's jeans riot terminates at 10:30 a.m. Freddy's sock madness ends at 11 a.m. K-B's best toy deals stop at noon. Remember that many of the best deals are for "limited quantities" or "while supplies last." If you really want that one special something, land at that store first. Reach reporter Bill Kettler at 776-4492, or e-mail [email protected] Mail Tribune Home | Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. | Dow Jones & Co., Inc. | Privacy | Contact Us Copyright � 2001 Mail Tribune, Inc.