I know there are a lot of references to camelcamelcamel on here, but in searching, I don't see a dedicated topic. I was talking to a member last week and said something about getting a $400 year of food. They asked about it, and I started to explain, but the conversation would always turn to something else quickly and I never got it done.
Simply stated, "Camelcamelcamel is a website that tracks prices of products sold on Amazon.com." It keeps the histories of Amazon products, third party new, and third party used. In addition, you can create an account that will alert you to price changes that meet your parameter. It's an excellent way to pick up a deal on something you're not in a hurry for. Perfect for a lot of prepper needs as you build up items you know you'll need eventually.
Although you can, unlike many sites, the purpose isn't just to "go" to the website at
https://camelcamelcamel.com/ without a product in mind.
The first step is to find a product on Amazon first, and go from there. I'll use the $400 year of food as an example. Here's the current Amazon listing - showing $1755.19 as the current price as of this writing.
https://www.amazon.com/Relief-Foods-Entree-Emergency-1560-Serving/dp/B00GU9542YThe first thing you want to do is check the price history. Copy that URL into your clipboard. Head over to camelcalmelcamel.com and drop that entire URL into their search bar.
The most prominent thing on the result page is a price history chart. In some cases, the pricing history will be pretty stable, but in others, like this one, there's a HUGE swing in pricing over time.
It's sold for as high as $2,111.80, as low as $388.51, for an average of $1,774.31 with today's price at $1,751.08 (close to real time, but a tiny bit off).
Now if it's something you'd like to have, but don't need it right away - you can take a shot at getting a huge deal, but of course there are no guarantees,
If you want to be alerted to a deal, sign up with your email, fill in the "Desired Price" field, and submit. If/when it ever hits that price, you'll get an email alert.
The first time I tracked this product, it was shortly after the the low price dip at about $650, but I'd missed it. So I put in $675 as the price I wanted to be alerted to. Not sure why I didn't pick it up at the ~425 blip around December '17 (oh yeah - death in the family), but then it rocketed down to the 388.51 price last May. I bought it as it was going down - got it for like $403 and then it fell some more (Amazon won't refund price differences - even if it's not delivered yet, but I'm happy).
I've used camelcamelcamel for radios, knives, some awesome #2 jumper cables that dropped from like $80 to $17 - all kinds of stuff.
Just a great overall resource for things you know you want, but don't have to have right then, or higher end items you don't exactly have to have, but would grab for a stupid cheap price.