Alberta doesn’t have any provincial tax, so it is a great place to make large purchases. Unfortunately, I don’t really have a lot of need for anything expensive, save a car; which you can’t buy here and bring over efficiently anyways. Moderately expensive however, is always a category where there is stuff to buy (but not necessarily need).

I was at Black’s today and bought a Nikon 50mm f/1.8. It goes for $180 so right away I save $14.40. While I was in the store however, I saw a sales representative browsing Best Buy while their client was looking at a dSLR, so I figured that maybe they did price matching. I asked, and apparently they did (although YMMV). I mentioned that Vistek had the same lens for cheaper, I wasn’t sure exactly how much but knew it was below $170. So I said $164, and they sold me the lens for $164! I just checked and it’s actually $169 at Vistek.

So overall, I saved almost $30 which is one-sixth of the price!