It's one of those Monster Cables. They should go out of business too.

Best Buy's cheapest price (non-Monster even) is $29 for 6', $26 for 4', maybe at best half that if I could do a more in-depth search. Walmart is $15, and Frys is $8 (admittedly poor searches, but you see the difference).

Best Buy and the late Circuit City may not be the greatest examples of pricing around, but neither is Monoprice, being in a class of its own. A golden, ecstasy laced class of its own.

So the Circuit City cable costs 2678% more than the Monoprice one.

I too found no deals, if anything things were more. A 22" Acer LCD OPEN BOX, $135. NEW at Micro Center, 129.99.

I bite my thumb at thee.

But it has "ions" which cause the digital bits to travel faster than light, so they arrive before you send them. Of course, of you tried printing using this cable, you would violate a law of quantum flux foam theory, thus negating existence, so that explains the mark-up.

It's a classic tactic of "liquidation companies". These idiots are hired by big corporations with promised of returning actual PROFITS on liquidated merchandise. Foolish people are sucked into buying at HIGHER prices than a non-liquidating store down the street. I just witnessed the liquidation manager in a Circuit Shitty store openly dealing out the back door and instructing hesitant employees to get the product out there, not to keep the buyer waiting. Corporate America HATES to sell stuff cheap (it makes consumers question actual value if they heard someone getting a REAL 75% off on the same merch) so they have some possibly "unwritten" rules. One of which is to get in to another retail outlet for pennies on the dollar, but NEVER let the end-user have the same price unless it's the last unwanted crap in the store. Another is the tactic shown above, hike the price WAY up to the highest price that any USB cable has ever sold for, THEN taking the advertised reduction. I'm sure others have more tactics, the list could go on for days. Caveat Emptor!

HD cable price hiking is one of the few instances where I can't but help blame the person buying. If you are making these purchases you should have basic knowledge of what you are looking for. A 10 second google search would teach you that these cables from a brick and mortar are horribly overpriced and a scam to recoup losses on peripherals. Pre-Internet I would scream outrage as well. But it is imperative to use your resources to be even an adequate consumer. We are 15 years into mainstream internet usage and even the elderly should have enough grasp by now to conduct a little research.

@TheFuzz53:

2780.9%

Didn't we already learn our lesson here about the Circuit City liquidation sale??!? Shattered televisions with no ability to return the darned thing for a refund, percents off that are really a double mark up that is then marked down? Honestly, please, no more of these stories, stop going there people!

@chrisjames:

I always consider a cable overpriced if I can buy the individual components and build a (better) one myself for less. With today's automation and lower pricing in (industrial) bulk quantities, that should not be possible.

However, in most cases, it is possible. So I either try to find it cheaper online, or, barring that, just go ahead and build it. Most cables are incredibly easy to build (Network, Phone, composite, coax, component, audio, svideo, and, for the adventurous: IDE, Floppy, VGA, Serial and Parallel). Yes, I've made all those, they aren't really that hard.

@Emperor_GitEmSteveDave: I think $30.59 is a fair or even cheap price to pay for the ability to crush all matter in existence to a singularity. NEXT TO YOUR PC! Or what was your PC actually.

@Rollo Tony: Ah... the only phrase I've ever remembered from reading Shakespeare in high school. "I bite my thumb at thee"

He did what? Oh no he didn't!

PS. I felt bad standing in the store, watching all these people pick up these "deals" and going home with them. I did how ever see people looking at really bad deals, and would say something out loud to the tune of "Look how much this junk is, better off going elsewhere."

Maybe he's paying a premium for the "Frustration-free packaging".

@shepd: have you ever made HDMI cables yourself? I'm curious as to how difficult those are to make. One benefit you didn't mention was that handmade cables can be the exact right length. That's more important than having gold plated fiber optic cable(I've actually seen these).

I guess they figure they can make a buck off that one person who has been living in a bomb shelter for the last 15 years and doesn't already have a drawer full of usb cables.

@Rollo Tony: I work at one (for the next nine days) and tell people to go elsewhere all the time. No one likes getting ripped off, and unless you're a very rude customer, I have no problems directing you to better deals down the street or online.

My local CC store has pretty much nothing left but cables. People know better. Lots of HDMI, firewire, USB, RCA, component video, and various iPod connecting cables for $25+, even after 60% off.
Plus, what was even crazier was that they had some out-of-box, used, car dvd lcd screens and players (the ceiling mount type), for over $200. There were also some GPS units, and car CD changers on the same shelf that looked pretty beat up for upwards of $300. It looked the back of a Goodwill store. Who in their right mind would buy this stuff knowing they can't test it, and can't return it?

Fools. That's actually a next generation USC cable. Those normally sell for $100/ft.

The Dollar store near me sells a ton of cables, I just recently bought a 5 foot USB cable there.

I have at least half a dozen USB cables that came with various peripherals over the years. They are all still new in the original ziplock bag too! I never knew I was sitting on a [very small] gold mine! Time to go list some on ebay!

Thanks CC!

I got some great deals there.

40% off World Of warcraft with Expansion.
40% off a Projector.

I did my homework and checked what these things should cost, and at CC it was a great deal.

My wife stopped by yesterday and picked up a few CDs. I told her to see if they had any turntables. They had a floor model ION USB Turntable....my wife is not familiar with turntable anatomy but she basically said "There is a hole at the end of the tone arm." They want $75 for it. $75 for a non-working floor model of an item that's $100 on a bad day? That is either missing the cartridge or (more likely) doesn't actually have any guts? And I can't return it if I can't get it to work?

I told her to offer them $5. I guess they didn't go for it.

@Blueskylaw:

You forgot to subtract 1

($30.59/$1.10)-1

I love Monoprice. Everyone who hasn't heard of them should go to their website right now to see how awesome they are. We need a lot more companies like them and a lot less like CC and BestBuy.

It's really not fair comparing people to monoprice. Monoprice actually charges what the cables SHOULD cost.

Though all the same, this late into the game I would expect the cable to go for roughly the same price as a monoprice cable, and not the same price as radioshack or best buy.

Thats almost as bad as this
[www.flickr.com]
I found this $57.99 usb cable at an Office Depot liquidation in Cartersville, GA

Not sure what the current % off was, but even at 90% off its still $5.80!

@chrisjames:

I was installing a new SATA drive in my mother in law's computer and needed a single SATA cable...I wanted it done quick, so checked Best Buy...19.99 for the Geek Squad store brand.

I called her back and told her to live without the PC for 3 days. Monoprice 2.95 total.

@NotStimulated_GitEmSteveDave: In my use, it definitely brightened the room giving it ambience and character not seen with other USB cables. The shielded core kept the ions in line and unexpectedly enhanced my experience with printing the document. I was in heaven, dare I say ecstasy!

All this for a print job. XD

These liquidation "sales" are BS. Office Depot is going out of business, so I went there with my roommate to look for deals. I found a mousepad for $11, which was supposedly 40% off of the original price (it wasn't a fancy mousepad with an ergonomic wrist rest, either; it was same one that Wal-Mart sells for like $5). They're also selling dot matrix printer paper for $38, which is 70% off of the "original" price. I haven't found any deals at a liquidation sale yet.

I've stopped in at the local Circuit City every week, and prices have remained the same. At the moment the camera I'm interested in is slightly less that what I would pay at Amazon....but all purchases are final so the savings are not worth the risk.

Their computers and televisions are still priced lower on Amazon.

If anyone is going into Circuit City, I strongly advise them to price it. I compare it online with my phone.

That being said, Circuit City is still selling merchandise at these outrageous prices...so can you blame them if consumers are willing to buy at a stupid price?

@TheFuzz53: That's for the convenience of being able to drive to the store, fight for parking, walk during the rain, scrounge for it on the shelf, wait in line at the cashier, getting your receipt checked, driving back home...

Otherwise you'd have to shop in your PJs and wait a reasonably short time for it to be delivered to your doorstep. Oh the horror!

@qcgallus: Next to your future never-existing PC.

@Rollo Tony: You can get a brand new 22 inch Acer monitor shipped to you free from Newegg for 149.99. No tax to most states as well. The microcenter deal sounds better but I don't know which monitor it is, but there is one on Newegg for 149.99 now.

the cable was once touched by a monster cable employee.

@Applekid: Come to think of it, we couldn't get to the speed of light instantly, as there would be significant mass (briefly), so on the acceleration time would literally fly by...and you could shorten work days to a matter of milliseconds!

Monster Cable 4 lyfe.

@tinky XIII: They are bound to come back to you and complain if they get ripped off despite the fact that the store is closing and there are no returns. So this is a smart move for your sanity. The liquidation manager probably doesn't like it but if I had to work one of these sales I would probably tell people the same thing for my own sanity. There is no reason to not tell them though, they aren't going to fire you in the last days, and even if they did you wouldn't care. If your looking for a new job its not like your new boss is going to call the liquidation manager of previous store you worked at and inform them of what you did, so its not going to have effect on future employment either.

@BuddyHinton: Go Trojans!

Whats funny is that I HAVE found USB cables at retail stores cheap, you just have to know how to find them. I found one in a PSP media manager pack, the package was on sale for 1.99. I also found kids 1GB USB flash drives in Target recently for about 3$, they were clearanced with the rest of the toys. Look outside the computer section and you might get yourself some deals.

You can also get USB cables off freecyle for nothing or probably even craigslist. The dollar store also sells USB cables, and I have used theirs and found them to work fine. Last year I put a bunch of my older ones out at my yard sale for free and no one even took them. Some of my devices wouldn't work with a USB 1.0 cable only so I had to get some 2.0 compatible ones, I bought them at monoprice for around $1 each and I still have the same cables from a couple years ago and they still work just fine. Monoprice ships very fast too. I have NEVER had a USB cable break on me.

@jedo1507r: I actually bought some 7' Monster USB cables off Woot! a few Woot!-offs ago, and it literally brightens my room b/c it has a blinking blue light on it to tell you it's plugged in. While it's about as useful as Homer's Everything's OK alarm, I now have a strobe like nightlight.

Last night, I decided there must be some good deals right? No. I did, however, see something fairly astonishing. A lady bought a 1st gen Sony a300 for $400. Good price you say? How about with no box, cables, battery, instructions, warranty? Not even a lens cover. Ah stupid people, they keep the world slowing rotating.

@WiglyWorm: I would expect a store bought cable to cost around 10$, and up for longer ones. The retail store does have to make money, but they don't have to gouge people. This is a fair price point that is not gouging the customer. The 9$ you would pay by not ordering from monoprice is a conveinience tax.

But at a liquidation sale I would expect the price to be lower than monoprice, they have to give me a reason to shop at their store, and since they don't allow returns and are closing, technically the price should be cheaper than monoprice or any other online or retail store that I can buy at. This goes for any item in the store really, it should be priced at THE lowest price out of every option I have available to me. If its not then online I go.

@Rollo Tony: The Circuit city by my house had only 1 LCD TV, it was a 32" with a damaged bottom corner, so the screen had a visible "tear" on the screen, and they wanted well around $1100 for it.

I talked with one of my friends who works at a Circuit City, during their liquidation alone they have a 2.7 million dollar profit going on. What pisses off the workers there is they got informed their store profits are going to pay the exec's bonuses.

@plyhard13: Someone bought a first gen 512mb Ipod shuffle off me on ebay for 39.99 before shipping. The total was about 47.99 after shipping. This was last Xmas. Yes it was in the box and it was sealed, but for like 3$ more she could have gotten a 1GB brand new model shuffle for 49.99 in store. Stupid people do keep the economy going.

It was the same thing at CompUSA when they died. I finally went on the 3rd to last day of the sale. I bagged 2 Xbox360 games that were on par with used ebay prices, but without the hassle. But that was it. Everything else was ridiculous. Display model laptops for a couple hundred more than online prices for new. There was a 32" LCD hdtv with a broken screen that would need to be replaced. It was almost $600.

They are available at my local dollar store.

@Outrun1986:

I was interested in an auction on ebay once. The highest bid was twenty some dollars. On the auction page, in the description, there was a link to the seller's non-ebay web store. The item was $15, same shipping, and no need to wait another 3 days for the auction to end. I ended up not bidding.

Around that same time I sold a DVD. It retailed for $25. I bought it for $12 online, average price was about $18. The store ended up sending me two, I told them I paid for one but they just told me to keep both. I put it up on ebay with a low starting price and it ended up selling for $28. I can't comprehend not spending 2 minutes to compare prices, especially when shopping online.

@kingofmars:

HDMI might be a bit tougher (as would be SATA), but I'm sure there's a way to buy either a solderable connector or a crimpable connector. I've never done one because I've not found the need to do it yet. :)

I do see these, but I bet they're a rip off. I'll wait until China counterfeits them:

[www.crunchgear.com]

For SATA, you can buy SMT male and female sockets, so you can build your own (ugly!) cables still. But I don't know what the specs for the wire are, so that'd be a guessing game. If you're worried about SMT soldering, you can pick up an iron and tips plenty fine enough for just over $100. I personally love Hakko and hate Weller, which complicates things because over here almost nobody sells Hakko stuff, it's usually Weller or bust. I'd give an arm and a leg to get my Hakko 911/941 back. It was a modchip installers dream tool, trust me! :)

Length is important, although it becomes less important when you build cables from the right things (eg: VGA cables look great at 10 ft+ if you use RG-59 or RG-179/U [RG-6 is generally a waste of money for VGA, 150 or so Mhz is usually the top signal rate]). And I got a free gold-plated fibre optic cable from a distributor of ours once. :D I never bothered to sell them.

Hmmm, I guess I can add fibre optic and BNC-ended cables to the list of self-made cables as well.