I was looking at buying a couple of DVDs before Christmas, but I’ve long had a rule about buying DVDs: I don’t spend more than £10 on them. It’s not worth it, prices drop so fast. In fact, I was surprised to find that DVDs that were well into double-figures were below £10 not long after, so I decided to investigate just how fast prices drop so we can all stay informed about the best time to buy.
It’s probably worth noting that the prices were harvested from Amazon.co.uk over a period of about four months (February – June 2009). It’s also worth noting that some of these prices were pre-release.
The figures were collected fairly simply, I monitored their top 10 DVDs each day and recorded the details. I would then monitor those DVDs thereafter and add a row whenever the price changed, marking the date it did.
You can download the data here in PDF format here, and CSV here.
Two month sweet spot
My gut feel before this was that two months was the sweet spot, wait two months after release and, invariably, the price had plummeted. While I didn’t have too many films where I could really say where release was and when it dropped below £10 (they didn’t while I was capturing data, for example), from the eight I did look at they varied from 24 days to 89 days after release but the average was 55 days.
Watch out for rocks
Some really do drop like a rock. Taken, for example, dropped to £7.98 after 55 days, but was down to £6.98 just two days later. It took just 113 days to drop below £5 (to £4.98).
Your Don’t Mess with the Zohan and Burn After Reading dropped the fastest, getting to under £10 in 24 days each, although they appeared right at the start so they were probably higher for longer (I first recorded Burn After Reading on 28th February, whereas Amazon state its release date as the 9th Feb, Zohan also appeared 28th Feb, but has a release date of the 19th Jane).
Animated movies hold their value
Something else I’d seen before and it born out in my figures is that Disney and Pixar animated movies don’t drop, or at least take a long time to do so. WALL-E was released on the 24th November, but was still at £13.48 by late June 2009 (at the time of writing it’s at £7.98). Pinocchio (Platinum edition) was released on the 9th of March and was still at £14.48 at the end of June (at the time of writing it’s up to £16.48!). This from a film released in 1940.
Price tweaking
It’s obvious Amazon tweak their prices continually, by as little as 1p and often by 10p. I believe this was in response to what other retailers (online and offline) were doing. For example, High School Musical 3 bounced between £13.18 and £13.38 a total of 17 times over 61 days (between 15th April and 14th June) and it wasn’t massively different either side. There were a couple of instances where, shortly after release or on release the price dropped massively. In the case of Twilight and Quantum of Solace I seem to remember this was to counter so strong offers by big supermarket chains.
As such, it’s worth keeping an eye out for a bargain, quite a few big films dropped massively in price during their run down in price and can also spike. Mamma Mia! was at £6.98 and £7.98 in March, and suddenly shot up to £17.98 on the 8th April for a few days before dropping back down to £6.98 a few days later. Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa dropped to £9.98 in March, went back up to £10.98 and then £11.98 in April, dropped to £7.98 in May and £9.98 in June before jumping back up to £11.98 in late June. The Dark Knight suddenly jumped from £5.98 to £12.98 in April for three days before falling back to £5.98 again.
DVD vs Blu-ray
The only real comparison I have DVD versus Blu-ray is Quantum of Solace. The DVD started at £12.98, the Blu-ray at £17.98. For some of March the DVD was 1p dearer, at £17.99 compared to £17.98 for the Blu-ray, and for a few days in April it was cheaper too (£11.98 versus £12.68), before it climbed back up to £5 dearer. It did eventually dip to £9.98 in mid-June, by which time the DVD was £7.98. The DVD managed a drop to £6.98 for three days in March, making it £11 cheaper for a time.
I want to look at a cost comparison in a separate article (not just between DVD and Blu-ray), but generally it looks like Blu-ray stays higher for longer and doesn’t benefit from the same sudden drops after a few months.
To put it simply, my feelings bore out. Wait two months after the release and you’ll pay less than a tenner for your DVDs. If you can wait three to four you’ll probably pay much less and maybe even under a fiver.
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