Earlier Black Friday kicks off shopping season

“I only shop for sales,” she said.

Carey Maguire, 33, and her sister Caitlyn Maguire, 21, showed up at the same Target about two hours before it opened. Their goal was to buy several Nook tablet computers, which were on sale for $49. But while waiting in line they were also using their iPhone to do some online buying at rival stores.

“If you’re going to spend, I want to make it worth it,” said Caitlyn Maguire, a college student.

By the afternoon on Thanksgiving, there were 11 shoppers in a four-tent encampment outside a Best Buy store near Ann Arbor, Mich., that opened at midnight. The purpose of their wait? A $179 40-inch Toshiba LCD television is worth missing Thanksgiving dinner at home.

Jackie Berg, 26, of Ann Arbor, arrived first with her stepson and a friend Wednesday afternoon, seeking three of the televisions. The deal makes the TVs $240 less than their normal price, so Berg says that she’ll save more than $700.

“We’ll miss the actual being there with family, but we’ll have the rest of the weekend for that,” she said.

But some shoppers decided to stick to Black Friday. Nicole Page of Bristol, Conn., shopped with her sister at a Wal-Mart in Manchester, Conn., at about 4:45 a.m. on Black Friday. Page, who recently finished school and started working as a nurse, bought an electric fireplace for $200 that she said was originally $600. Her shopping cart also had candy canes, a nail clipper for her dog and other stocking stuffers.

Page said she and her sister stuck with the Black Friday tradition; They’ve shopped in the early morning of Black Friday in previous years.

“We try to make a tradition of it. It’s kind of exciting,” she said.

• Mae Anderson and Anne D’Innocenzio reported from New York. Mitch Weiss contributed from Greenville, S.C. Stephen Singer contributed from Connecticut. Tom Krisher contributed to this report from Ann Arbor, Mich., and Toledo, Ohio.

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