Amazon Gold Box Deals - Make Sure You are Getting the Most out of Amazon's Discount System

If you buy a lot of Lego sets, you know Amazon.om is a great place to get them. They usually have some of the best prices out there, they have excellent shipping terms with Amazon Prime and with their super saving shipping, and they price match everything (they actually price match everything, TRU, rather than just stating that they do…).

But there is another way on Amazon to get some pretty good deals, and if you are not utilizing it, you are making a big mistake. It’s called the Amazon Gold Box “quick pick” deals.

Amazon has a deals page that everyday updates with deals all throughout their product category. This page has Gold Box deals (special deals site wide), lightning deals (special deals that pop up for a limited time), and a “quick picks” section. This “quick picks” section is a set of deals that are specifically picked for you – they aren’t available to everyone! Basically, they take an already discounted item, and if they think you will like it, they place it in this section and add a special extra discounted coupon that you would not get if you just searched for the item yourself. Here is Amazon’s description from the website:

Quick Picks
Products selected every day especially for you, paired with limited-time coupons that offer additional savings.

You only have a Quick Picks section if you have an Amazon account and have purchased an Amazon item before. After making your first purchase, a few days later your Quick Picks section will appear. You can get to it by going to www.amazon.com, signing in, and then clicking on “Today’s Deals” over in the left hand corner. The corresponding page will have Gold Box site-wide sale items at the top. If you scroll down, near the bottom you will see your Quick Picks section. Here is a picture of what this looks like:

You can only purchase an item out of your quick picks section once per day. It can present up to 6 items, so you have to make sure you choose wisely! Amazon uses everything that you buy from them, everything that you rate and review, and any other things on their website you designate that you own, to understand your interests and know what deals to present to you. It isn’t perfect, but it is a great system for getting coupons on things you may want without having to do much at all!

So as a Lego collector/investor/builder, how do you manipulate your Amazon account so that you can ensure you will always be getting Lego sets – and especially the Lego sets you want? It’s actually fairly simple. As I stated before, everything you ever purchase from Amazon is in their system as an item you own. Because you own it, they assume you are interested in it. Using these items, they take similar items and assume you are interested in those as well. For example, if you purchase a Lego Death Star 10188, Amazon might assume that you would also like a Lego Star Destroyer 6211.

Unfortunately this works both ways. I purchase a lot of other items through Amazon that are for my House, or car. I purchased a Refrigerator filter through Amazon, and a few days later Amazon had me down as a filter junkie. I don’t want all of that stuff in my Gold Box when I could be saving money off great Lego sets.

So we have to tell Amazon specifically what we are currently looking for and what we are not interested in at all, even if we did at one time buy it. So here are a few ways to do that:

Amazon Checkout Cart

One of the ways Amazon selects what should be in your Quick Picks is through items you have placed in your cart at one time. If you actually place items in your cart that you want, even if you don't purchase them, Amazon remembers that you liked that item and makes recommendations based on it. So an easy way to manipulate this is to add a bunch of Lego sets you would like to your cart. Even if you don't buy them, it will help signal to Amazon that you would like them to start putting what you want in your Quick Picks.

Obviously, along with this, anything you actually purchase is used for recommendations as well as it has been in your cart. This can be a problem if, like we talked about before, you buy non-Lego stuff. There is a way to remedy this and it will be discussed below.

Amazon Wish-List

So if you have ever fooled around in your Amazon cart, you will have seen a little link at the bottom of each item in the cart that says “save for later”. If you press this button, that item is transferred to something called your “Amazon Wish-List”. This is a great feature, because if there are deals on your item, Amazon will alert you that something on your wish list has changed price. But along with this, Amazon takes a big peek at your wish-list to tell what you are looking for. The more Lego items you have on your wish-list, the better your chances of getting Lego items in your Quick Picks everyday. I generally add every Lego set from every one of the themes I am looking for so that Amazon will know that I like Lego, and that I like it from these certain themes (there are over 100 Star Wars Lego sets in my wish-list).

Amazon Recommendations Page and Item Reviews

This is the place that really makes a big difference. So, do you want to know what Amazon currently thinks you are a fan of without having to wait for your next set of Quick Picks? Go to www.amazon.com and then click at the top left where it says “<username>'s Amazon”. Now you will see a new page come up and in the middle a the top will be large lines of items in different departments that Amazon has picked for you. This is shown below:

These are currently all the departments and all the items Amazon thinks you like. See anything you don't want? Mine has dog and cat food! Who knows what I bought to make them think that.

Well, if you want to edit your items, click on the link under the section that says “see all recommendations in <department name>”. When you click this, you will get a page of items that Amazon thinks you are interested in.

For each item, you will notice under the name you can click whether you own it, or you are not interested. As well, to the right, you can rate an item as well. This is how you really narrow down the stuff that shows up in your Quick Pick's. Amazon is pretty bold and assumes you like all these items for some reason or another. So, any item you don't want, just click “not interested” until those are all gone. You can continue to do it until the section as gone as well! Once you have gotten rid of those, you can fully help narrow down Amazons recommendations for you.

On top of this, the reviews are really helpful as well. You want Amazon to know you really like Legos? Give a bunch of sets in your favorite themes 5 Stars! The “own it” button is there as well. You have to be careful with this though. The rumor is that if you press this button, Amazon is not likely to recommend that set to you. So you can manipulate this in your favor. If there is a theme you don't particularly love, but one set you want, tell Amazon that you own all of those sets and give them 5-stars. Make sure you leave out the one set you want. You have now effectively told Amazon “That is the only set I need to complete the collection”.

So even with all of this – you still are going to make purchases that are non-Lego (which is a sad thing) and these are going to influence Amazon until you remove all the items, right? Well, here is a trick. After you purchase, go back to your recommendations page and click on a section of recommendations like we discussed above. At the top you will see something that says “recommendations based on items you own”. The “items you own” will be a link. Click this, and Amazon will show everything you ever purchased. If you don't want something to be considered as part of your recommendations, just click the check box on the right that says “Don't use for recommendations”. Now you are protected from buying something for a pet, and looking at discounted cat food until the end of time!

Further Manipulation

This method is hit or miss, but can definitely work to a certain extent. So, say there is a particular set you want. First, remove everything but this from your wish-list. Then go to your recommendations and remove every set from it (or own them all if you want). Now highly rate the item. I have not tried this, but there have been several others that have used this method to get a certain set on discount.

Remember, if you have bought this item before, or told Amazon you own it, make sure you find it before hand and un-click the “own it” button. Otherwise, chances are Amazon won't put it in your Quick Picks.

Gold Box Quick Picks Deal Sharing Thread

One of our most valued members, FCBarcelona101 started a thread for sharing Gold Box deals. Basically, if you have sets in your gold box that are good deals and you don't want any of theme, you can post in this thread: http://www.brickpicker.com/forum/index.php/topic/4499-amazon-gold-box-deals-sharing-thread/page-3?hl=gold

Someone else may respond and if they want the deal, you can work out to let them purchase it using your account. This way, we continue to share great deals with each other.

So go get your Amazon Gold Box recommendations set up right now and make sure to come back and report your results. If you find or know of any other methods to manipulate your Gold Box deals, make sure you post them in the comments section.

Note: All of the information here are my own opinions and are pulled from my experiences. You may or may not have success with these methods.