You might get lucky on Craigslist and find a 2500k for $100 or $120, but on a forum like this I would guess that it will be pretty rare. People would buy them at $150 shipped because even at that price it would outperform any IVB chip at the same price point.
Just dug this up from earlier, guess I missed it.
This is probably the only "price drop" we will see on SB after the new CPUs come out, that is, with a bunch of people switching over to Ivy Bridge, the old CPUs will start clogging up For Sale forums and eBay, thus driving down pricing for used 2500K CPUs.
If I can get it for $40 more online, then I just buy online.
There has been occasional sales at around $190-200 online. You can also see if you can pricematch at NCIX US. They won't match $180, but they may split the difference.
They lose money on everyone they sell, IMHO. And for every one of us who walks in there and out with just a bundle, they sell several people on whole PCs with the rest of the components at full markup. People will do that (I have been very tempted!) and spend that "savings" on an over priced graphics card or similar because it is easy to justify it to themselves. They did just save $50 on the CPU and got a free mobo, after all.
I don't think they're losing that much. Remember that there is 10,000 unit pricing from Intel, plus channel rebates for volume. They also aren't that overpriced. They often have SATA DVD writers for $18.99 and 4GB DDR3-1333 kits for $18.99 and 8GB kits for $34.99. Motherboard pricing is in line with Newegg pricing, sometimes a few bucks more and occasionally cheaper - and that's without bundle pricing even! Case prices seem competitive too, especially since Newegg usually charges $10-20 for shipping a case. Their HDD prices aren't bad either.
Note that of course Newegg wins when something is on sale, and GPU and PSU pricing isn't as good. Still, buying everything at MC is not necessarily a bad thing and the huge savings (with a mobo/CPU bundle) may make it a break even proposition. Returns/exchanges are also quick/easy if there's a DOA part.
Oh yeah, best part is that you CAN ask MC to pricematch Amazon or Newegg.
Yeah, just pay tax instead of shipping. That's all.