Best Buy Ad from September 1996

It really is amazing to look back at those prices. If most people under 17 now saw one of those cell phones on page 6, they'd probably think you handed them a Fisher Price toy.

My first computer (1999) was 300mhz w/ 96mb of ram and a 3gb harddrive and I thought that thing was terrible. Seeing computers with almost half the speed and a lot less ram/hd for $1800+ is insane to think about.
 
that refrigerator is ABOUT the same price today..

That is freaking werid



LOL i forgot ps1 games were 40 bucks... now we complain about paying 30 for dsi games :)
 
This is awesome. Thanks for posting it.

I found the cell phones funny as well. The little "Macarena!" section doubly so. Mostly, it was nostalgic.

Also, Best Buy sold PowerPCs?! Learn something new every day...
 
The TV's seem expensive to me, I paid $140 in 2004 for a very nice CRT TV from Panasonic, about 22 inches. Yes I still have the TV and I am not giving it up. That ad has a 25 inch TV which is only slightly bigger than mine going for $299!!!

You are right the fridge is probably close in price today but you have to consider that if you converted $499 or whatever dollars from 1996 it would be a lot more today. The washer's don't seem to be too off either, also it seems there are a lot more expensive washers these days, so those look pretty cheap to me. That $599 combo unit looks like a good deal as we paid $499 for a maytag washer last year.

I have seen those cell phones at yard sales around here.. they are massive and extremely heavy.

I also just got a similar VHS-C video camcorder at a yard sale, it was free, and it does work and even came with battery and charger. There was an invoice for a $189 repair in the bag....

$399 for a CRT monitor also seems very expensive, did they really cost that much back then?

The game prices I was expecting since I know I have found genesis games with $70-80 price tags on them, now if you converted that money from 1992 or whenever those games would cost probably more than $100 today!
 
I remember pagers back then but didn't know about cell phones at the time. Kind of funny they have the Playstation items on 1 side of the ad and instead of Saturn, they have Genesis. I guess Genesis games were selling better back then.

Those computer prices are crazy, amazing how much prices have dropped since then. I just got a new desktop from Dell for $250 2 weeks ago (not close to top of the line but it is an upstairs spare room computer). And the RAM prices, 4MB people were adding at the time, now some people might add 4GB to a machine.
 
This reminds me of the night I was at a friend's house a few years ago and we found some old piece of shareware he'd downloaded from when we were in middle school, and it had an about page that suggested we print out an order form and mail it - in the mail - to an address to get the full version.

It was about 3 AM when we discovered this. We laughed for a solid fucking hour about it.

Also:

PACKERD BELL
fuck YEAH
HERE WE COME WITH SPEAKERS ON OUR MONITORS YEAH
PACKERD BELL
fuck YEAH
 
[quote name='Strell']PACKERD BELL
fuck YEAH
HERE WE COME WITH SPEAKERS ON OUR MONITORS YEAH
PACKERD BELL
fuck YEAH[/QUOTE]
I love this so much
 
my favorite is the little patriotic printer in the apple section spitting out a 8.5x11 piece of AMERICA for you.
 
Super Street Fighter II and Mega Man X on PC for $10 each.
Dat Packard Bell (my 2nd computer ever).
Apple computer prices still being ungodly expensive.
Movies being under $15.
Charging over $100 for a Genesis bundle.

Holy hell.
 
Hexen was the shit..


Aaliyah still alive...

I like the "Easier viewing with LARGE 11.3" Display when referring to the notebook (laptop)

Aiwa (they still kicking?)

good memories! Thanks OP!
 
Man, no one's commented about that amazing RAM deal. 16MB for $130? I bought 4GB of RAM about a year ago for $60. Now you can get 8GB for that price.

Also, did anyone see that RAM Doubler program that you can buy for your $2,400 PowerPC? On a floppy no less.
 
[quote name='whoknows']Interesting to see Apple was still overpriced back in 96.[/QUOTE]

Not that I'm an Apple Supporter (I'm really not) but that computer is actually comparable to the Acer computer on the next page.
 
Holy crap, I remember this ad! Wow...the memories are rushing back. It was my 1st semester of college, and one of my first experiences in a store that sold only electronics and electronic related items. And yes, I did come from an island!
 
Like many, a Packard Bell was my first machine. Very similar to the one pictured...at roughly the same price. I think my parents paid close to $2000. They even got it at Best Buy! (Ours only had a 1GB HDD...the one pictured has a 2GB drive.) :lol:
 
Best Buy didn't expand into the New York and Connecticut market until 5 years after this was published, but their ads really haven't changed a whole lot.
 
Crazy trip down memory lane OP! And LOL @ the 30 message beeper! I can't believe $34.99 was okay for 3D Ultra Pinball! I love the game, but that seems outrageous today.
 
I remember I discovered my first Best Buy store around this time. I was a sophomore in hs and remember loving that all of their CD's were around $12.99. Especially since Wherehouse Music, Blockbuster Music, and Sam Goody were all still around charging $18.99 for cd's.
 
How long has Best Buy been using that simulated image of the running back for their TVs? I recognized it instantly, and there's no way that the last time I saw it was 15 years ago.
 
Yeah, there was no Best Buy here in the 90's, we were lucky to have media play, that was THE place to go for tapes and CD's. Their prices were easily lower than any other store in our area for at least a little while before the price raises started coming. I don't think BB hit here until the internet age was in full swing, probably after 2000 or so.
 
[quote name='Bezerker']My first computer (1999) was 300mhz w/ 96mb of ram and a 3gb harddrive and I thought that thing was terrible. Seeing computers with almost half the speed and a lot less ram/hd for $1800+ is insane to think about.[/QUOTE]

My first PC was back in 1994. 486 running at 50mhz with a whole 4 megs of RAM and running Windows 3.1 to boot. Wing Commander III loaded like a sloth on that... but damn do I miss the days of good PC gaming that was around back then. My first computer however was an Atari 600 which I upgraded not too much later to an Atari 800XL. I even did some low level BASIC programming on it which was quite fun.
 
thanks, ive been wondering how much sega genesis games cost. when i was little, i never paid attention to prices.


imagine 10 years later 0__0
 
Thanks for sharing. Was fun to look at the prices. My first laptop cost around $1500. Back then it was reasonable. Now I wouldn't pay more than $500 for a laptop.
 
lol, I remeber that ad as I bought the Super Street Fighter 2 for PC out of that ad because it included a controller. The reciept is actually still in the box.
 
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