The honest answer is: some of them. Black Friday is neither the con its critics describe nor the once-a-year generosity its ads imply. It's a machine with several moving parts, and each part produces a different kind of "deal." Once you know the parts, you can sort the real discounts from the theater in about ten seconds — but only if you're comparing against the right number.

The anchor problem

Almost every Black Friday price is presented as a pair: the big red number you'd pay, and the crossed-out number you supposedly won't. That crossed-out number is doing all the psychological work. Behavioral economists call this anchoring — your sense of what something is worth gets pulled toward the first number you see, and the discount feels like the distance between the two.

The problem is that the anchor is frequently not a price anyone was recently paying. It's typically the manufacturer's list price from launch, and in consumer electronics, street prices commonly drift well below list within months. A product that has sold at a discounted street price all autumn can appear on Black Friday at nearly the same street price, anchored against the original list price, wearing an impressive-looking percentage. Nothing on the tag is technically false. The list price existed. But the "discount" measures distance from a number that stopped being the real price long ago. We cover why list prices work this way in MSRP is fiction.

Doorbusters and derivative SKUs

The second mechanism is subtler: sometimes the product itself is built for the event.

Manufacturers commonly produce derivative models — sometimes called doorbuster SKUs — specifically for high-volume shopping periods. A TV with a model number one letter different from the well-reviewed flagship, but a cheaper panel inside. A laptop that matches the popular configuration except for a slower storage tier or a dimmer screen. These products aren't scams; they're real goods at real prices, and sometimes decent value. But they borrow the reputation of a better product. The reviews you read, the recommendation your friend made, the spec sheet you half-remember — those belong to a different model number.

Derivative SKUs also conveniently defeat price matching. A retailer can promise to match any competitor's price on the same item, safe in the knowledge that no competitor carries that exact item. If a model number appears only at one chain and has no price history from before November, that's the tell.

The genuine discounts

Here's the part skeptics get wrong: real Black Friday discounts absolutely exist, and some are the best prices of the year.

The mechanism is the product lifecycle. By late November, most consumer electronics are deep into their model year. Manufacturers want to move volume during the biggest shopping period on the calendar, and they fund promotions to do it — on genuine current models, not just derivatives. Flagship TVs from the spring lineup, current-generation laptops, name-brand headphones: these commonly hit their lowest prices to date during the November promotional window. For a shopper who wanted the current model anyway, that's a real discount by any definition — the same product, cheaper than it has been.

The catch is that these genuine deals sit on the same shelves, in the same ad layouts, with the same red tags, as the anchored non-deals and the derivative SKUs. The presentation is identical. The tag cannot tell you which kind you're looking at.

The only test that works

There is exactly one reliable way to classify a Black Friday deal: compare the price against that product's own recent price history, not against the crossed-out number.

A genuine deal looks like this on a price chart: a stable street price for months, then a clear drop below anything in the chart's recent range. An anchored non-deal looks like a flat line — the Black Friday price is roughly where the price has been all along, and only the framing changed. A derivative SKU looks like no chart at all, because the product didn't exist until the event.

This test works because it removes the anchor entirely. You're no longer asking "how far is this from list price?" — a question the retailer controls — but "how far is this from what this product actually sells for?" — a question the market answers. Price-history charts let you run this check for any product in a few seconds, which is the reason PriceSniff exists. And note the test is about this product's history: a deal can be real (lower than ever for that model) and still be beatable later — clearance pricing on outgoing models, for instance, often goes lower still, as we cover in When do TVs actually go on sale?

A note on urgency

Everything above concerns price. Black Friday's other lever is time pressure — countdown clocks, limited quantities, "today only" framing. Some scarcity is real (doorbuster quantities genuinely are limited), but much of it is staged, and its purpose is to keep you from doing exactly the ten seconds of checking described above. A useful rule: any deal that can't survive a few minutes of price-history lookup wasn't a deal. The genuinely good Black Friday prices are usually live for hours or days, and many reappear during the December promotional stretch anyway.

The short version

  • Black Friday discounts are usually measured against list price, an anchor that often stopped reflecting the real selling price months earlier.
  • Derivative "doorbuster" SKUs are cheaper products wearing near-identical model numbers; a model number with no pre-November price history is the tell.
  • Genuine discounts do exist — late in the model year, manufacturers fund real promotions, and current models commonly hit their lowest prices to date.
  • The tag can't distinguish a real deal from theater; the product's own price history can, in seconds.
  • A real deal shows a clear drop below the recent range on a price chart; a fake one shows a flat line with new framing.
  • Urgency is a lever too — a deal that can't survive a quick price-history check wasn't one.