Black Friday and Cyber Monday are Over – What Tools did You Buy?

I don’t know anymore, if we’re in the start of the holiday shopping season, the middle, or the tail end.

But, the sales days purporting to offer the biggest tool deals, discounts, and bargains of the year are now past us.

Black Friday and Cyber Monday 2023 are in the rearview. What did you buy?

I took advantage of Acme Tools’ cyber coupon offer and bought a couple more Packout tool drawer units. They work great for my storage and organizational needs, with the size works better for me than steel or DIY wood storage solutions for certain things.

I say “a couple” because it was 4 or 5 in the morning and I was on auto-pilot working out ways to maximize my savings.

Don’t worry, I put it on the business credit card and was spending pre-tax dollars.

I also bought two more Dewalt ToughSystem compact tool boxes. The two ToughSystem 3-drawer units I ordered a few days ago arrived this morning. I plan to order two 2-drawer units as well while Home Depot has them on sale. I’ll sit them on a shelf or build my own mobile base.

The Dewalt Atomic cordless ratchet deal was too good to pass up.

I picked up some Bosch router bits from Amazon, plus a template guide. I also want an edge guide but that can wait.

I also bought a new small form factor computer and an inexpensive monitor to go along with it.

Adobe gave me the middle finger by specifically excluding current subscribers from their discounted rates, so I cancelled my Creative Cloud subscription. That was a week ago, and they offered me 2 months for free. I tried to get the Cyber deal, but it still didn’t allow me, and so I won’t renew once the 2 month extension is up.

I went with Affinity for their vector graphics app (I use Illustrator but not daily) and will test its photo editing app as a potential Photoshop replacement. If not, Adobe has a $10 monthly subscription compared to $60 for all apps. I use Photoshop daily, but other apps such as Illustrator less frequently. Affinity cost a little over $100 as a one-time fee for all of their apps on all my devices, and is good until their next major update.

Bosch can’t get a test sample to me quickly enough, so I purchased the new laser measurer to test and hopefully review before the holiday discount expires.

I ordered some robot motion project parts while waiting for the Cyber Monday deals to go live.

I almost bought a lot more, such as a Fein vac to replace the test sample I donated a year or two ago, but held off.

My desktop speakers broke last night. It would have been so much more convenient if it happened a week ago. But I dug out some other ones for the time being.

Oh – I also bought two more Dewalt organizers, USB-C SSD hard drives, and… I think that’s it.

I entered the holiday season not needing much besides storage products, and so I think I did alright so far. The Dewalt ratchet was the only unexpected impulse buy for personal use purposes.

I worked through the night and breakfast time on Black Friday and Cyber Monday, and that often leads to some surprises. Ah – I also ordered some hobby modeling books and supplies.

Sorry – it’s going to take me a couple of days to wind down. I think that’s about it.

There are a bunch of other things I’ve been considering, but the discounts were too little – or non-existent – to sway me or rush a purchasing decision.

I’ve been dragging my feet about purchasing mill-to-CNC conversion parts until I’m ready to start the project (I hoped to have finished by now), but none of that stuff would have been discounted anyway.

What’d you buy? Did you find deals on everything you were looking to buy? I strayed from strictly talking about tools – please feel free to do the same. But, stray within reason – no one really needs to year about your pajamas.

Also, did you like ToolGuyd’s deal coverage? What would you change for next year?