Amazon sells LeapFrog’s Letter Factory, Let’s Go to School and Talking Words Factory
DVDs for $8.49 a piece. At 43% off the $14.98 list price, it looks like a bargain. But, I just spotted the same 3 DVDs at Costco selling for $5.99 per DVD, or 60% off the list price. Sure, Costco’s DVD selections are limited and the stock constantly changes, but if Costco is carrying a DVD that you want, take a closer look.

Lowe’s sells a 16 pack of Duracell AA batteries for $9.97.

Costco sells the same 16 pack for $8.49. The Target 16 pack costs $10.39.

If I am in a different store, Costco doesn’t make it easy for me to figure out whether I should buy right away or hold off until the weekly Costco run. While Costco does have a website, not all items sold in the warehouse appear on the website.

Absolutely horrible photo. Couldn’t get a close-up and the phone focused on the box instead. Anyways, the 16 pack of AA batteries sells for $8.49 and the 16 pack of AAA sells for $11.39. No way I could finish a 16 pack of AAA in one year. However, the pack I bought from OSH is good until 2015, which is six years away.

I needed some AAA batteries and picked up an 8 pack at OSH.

I really don’t have too many devices that require AAA batteries, so I wasn’t going to buy that jumbo pack from Costco, even though on a per battery basis, it would likely have been much cheaper. If I bought a 4 pack, the per battery price was $0.985. For the 8 pack, the per battery price was $0.795. Since Costco had trained me to buy in bulk, I took a look at the 16 pack price.

At OSH, the 16 pack of AAA batteries cost $0.81 per battery—slightly more than the 8 pack price! I don’t have a AAA battery comparison at a different store, but I do have a AA battery comparison at Target.

Target sells a 16 pack of AA batteries for $10.39. OSH sells the same for $12.95—24.64% more than the Target price.

Apple sells the iPod Touch 8GB for $229.00 and the 16GB for $299.00.

If you don’t want to pay full retail, Costco sells the 8GB for $214.99 and the 16GB for $274.99, which is a few cents more than Amazon. I was really surprised that the iPod Touch 8GB was selling for more than $200 because it really isn’t too different from the original iPhone 8GB. Imagine that. If you upgrade from the original iPhone to the new iPhone 3GS, your 2-year-old phone has a residual value of $200. That shows how much of a game changer the iPhone really is. The touchscreen of the IPod Touch/iPhone is so intuitive that when I recently picked up an iPod Nano and iPod Classic at the Apple Store, it took me about 30 seconds to get reacquainted with the scroll wheel, which feels less than cutting edge at this point.