The Best Post-Holiday Sales: 2009’s Top After-Season Sales and Bargains

Score 2009’s best post-holiday sales and deals with our experts’ guide to after-season bargains on HDTVs, digital cameras and more.

Shh, don’t tell Santa. Much as we adore his annual visits, the prospect of gathering up mountains of wadded wrapping paper, hauling the Christmas tree out to the curb and recovering from one too many glasses of eggnog makes us equally dread the morning after.

Thankfully for high-tech bargain hunters though, December 26th needn’t simply be a day you write off to breaking out the snow shovel or risking electrocution yanking down yards of twinkling lights. Courtesy of countless post-holiday retail and online sales, it could also be the one you score an incredible after-season deal. Thank those merry little elves we call accountants: With consumers gorged to their limits and stores still chock full of overflowing merchandise, retailer desperation reaches a peak, and discounts can easily outstrip the pre-Christmas sales.

Looking to use this opportunity to snag that shiny new smartphone, laptop or HDTV you’ve spent endless months lusting after? We’ve compiled a few tips to help post-holiday binge shoppers stuff their empty stockings full of today’s hottest gadgets and futuristic accessories for a fraction of what they would have cost as little as even 48 hours sooner.

Shop smart – buy the gadgets and consumer electronics everyone else isn’t.

Sorry, trend hoppers: After-holiday sales typically depend on desperate retailers trying to unload stock that didn’t move before Christmas. While that means you won’t find hot items that sold out early (i.e. Barnes & Noble’s Nook eReader) suddenly under deep discount, fear not, however. What you can discover are plenty

You won't be finding many sales on the Nook

of great deals on equally exciting high-tech gifts that others may have overlooked.

“Look for products in categories that haven’t been selling as well, for example desktop PCs or digital music players without Apple or iPod on the box,” says Digital Trends’ own technology analyst Scott Steinberg. He also recommends keeping an eye on highly-competitive categories where prices reliably drop just weeks after a new product comes out, like CDs, DVDs, video games and Blu-ray discs. You can additionally save a bundle by shopping for slightly older, but no less functional, items as well. For example: While Star Trek might still go for a premium, other home theater showpieces such as last year’s The Dark Knight should be priced to move.

The moral of the story? The less registers ring, the likelier retailers are to be forced to chase potential suitors, with even the most useful everyday consumer electronics subject to the vagaries of the marketplace, much to your benefit. Case in point: Ben’s Bargains’ content manager Ken Hoo says that sales of navigation devices have reached a standstill this year, leading to superior pricing for today’s shoppers. “GPS systems haven’t done well lately, simply because the iPhone and many newer smartphones have built-in GPS functionality,” he explains. Luckily for those who still refuse to stop and ask directions, that leaves standalone devices from manufacturers like Garmin, TomTom and Mio ripe for steep discounting.