Let the shopping games begin

If the shopping were a sport this weekend would be the Super Bowl, the World Series and the Daytona 500 all wrapped up in one.

Like any successful team you need a game plan to be successful in a sport. Now is the time to start planning how to best take advantage of what has become the annual tradition of post Thanksgiving shopping. Your Thursday newspaper will be your game guide. As usual it will be as stuffed with dozens of inserts promoting thousands of items on sale. You can find a list of locations where The News and Sentinel is on sale here.

Game time is early for some, as early as 3 a.m. on Friday. Shoppers will stand, newspaper inserts in hand, to take advantage of the some of the best deals of the year. Businesses hope you will crowd their stores to take advantage of not only the great deals, but buy some of the full price items as well.

Increasingly shoppers are turning to the online versions of businesses to avoid the crowds and get the same great prices. Some were advertising last week that Black Friday prices would be available online on Thanksgiving. Call is a pre-game to the big event Friday; you can in many cases get started early.

The early shopping online is a fairly recent addition to the game. Black Friday, so named because it is very profitable for the businesses, has in the past been followed by Cyber Monday, a day when employees return to work and switch their shopping to their desktops.

Regardless of how you shop this weekend. Remember to pace yourself and enjoy the game.