I thought I would mention a few things about obtaining the Peppers release...it seems my old habits have surfaced...I always love to "chase the deal"....well this time my approach was completely different....I wanted to get it on the release date...and boy was I surprised at what I discovered...another poster on this thread mentioned he was going to head to Best Buy on the release date..I believe it was Seilerbird...I was shocked to find out that my local Best Buy wasn't going to have it available...the store close to me is a high volume store and has a Magnolia in it and it's not going to carry the deluxe version!...they are going to have at least one of the cheaper versions...I'm not exactly living in the boondocks...to be sure I called the corporate office and the website and it's only available on the website...I actually went to the store and the manager looked on his internal software and he confirmed that some cheaper versions would be in the store...but not the deluxe version...so if any of you plan on going to your local Best Buy I would advise calling first...maybe it's just my area...but I doubt it...
So my next move for a local purchase was Barnes & Noble....they had it on their website for $124.99 with free shipping and I would have to pay tax..and they wouldn't ship it until the release date.....so I called their corporate office and they said it was up to the individual stores to order it....so I called my local store and he said they would have 1 copy "for display" purposes...he said he could order one for me and hold it at the store BUT he would have to charge me the retail price..$149.99 and of course tax would be involved...he was a nice guy and I explained to him that I was trying to support my local block and mortar store and pay a little more than online prices to get it on the release date... but that was too much over online deals like Music Direct...he understood and said the managers of these stores have tried to explain it to their bosses but they aren't supporting the brick and mortar stores and are probably just giving them lip service with the end goal of becoming a total online business...
My next local attempt was at Target...I shop there often and it's so close to me...their website had a competitive price of $117.99 with free shipping and if you have a store RED CARD(Target Debit or Credit Card)you get an additional 5% off...so that would take care of most of my sales tax(7%)...but they weren't sending the deluxe versions to their stores...so I called the corporate office and asked when they would ship it...and it wouldn't be shipped until the release date and might take a week or so...so I was out of local options
I first went with Bullmoose...then switched to Music Direct when the 20% discount was offered...and for some reason I wanted this release sooner...I usually just wait and go with the lowest price...but then I remembered my old friend...amazon....I had some credit on there that I had to use anyway... and I decided to step into the role of GOS...MR. PRIME TIME...GOS is addicted to amazon prime...don't let him tell you anything else..so after the $19 credit my order came to $115.88 and I will get it on the release date..which I paid $8.98 for the release date arrival instead of the free shipping...
So the moral of this story is that even though I live in a decent sized city I couldn't just walk into a retail store and buy this classic release...and another thing I noticed during this research is that most people never knew about this release...one of the surprise elements of this journey is that in the Target "music" department they mentioned that they did carry a deluxe version of "some country star"...but to this generation I guess the Beatles didn't make the cut