Quite a lot of water under the bridge since Kevin Azzouz’s wife taught Sean how to blow bubbles with bubble gum up in San Luis Obispo. (I’m glad someone taught him; I never could figure out how to do it, despite my sister trying to teach me for years).

Boy am I old!

Wait for a sale, and bargain. Specialty mattresses usually have a set price, but you can save at least 50 percent off list price for an innerspring type. Ads for “blowout” sales make such events seem rare. They aren’t. If the price is good, buy; if not, wait. Our shopper spent $1,300 more for a Serta Perfect Sleeper set at one Sears store than for the same set at another Sears a week later.

An advertised “bargain” may not be all it seems, so read the fine print. A Bloomingdale’s flyer we saw touted 75 percent savings on mattresses, but a footnote revealed that the list price from which the discount was calculated “may not be based on actual sales.”

The Wife and I have also researched bedding quite a bit, and have discovered that comparison shopping is all but impossible, by design. The sales are constant, and they have carefully crafted things like “price match guarantees” that are 100% worthless.

Here’s the trick: each manufacturer in reality only makes a relatively small number of actual different models of mattresses or box springs. There are legitimate differences between these models - spring count, fabric quality and so forth. But here’s where they get dicey on you.

They overlay these different models on a massive program of different model NAMES, and restrict each set of model NAMES to one retailer! This is why the price-matching guarantee is so worthless. You go into Sears, or Mattress Mart, or Joe Schmoe’s Bedding Store, and you find that lovely Sealy Union SE Plush Pillowtop II mattress. Then you go “comparison shopping” and try to find the same mattress elsewhere. You can’t find it! You may find the “Sealy Regal” model that…gosh…seems IDENTICAL in every objective measurement, but perhaps the color of the piping will be different. Boom! It’s a “different” mattress, and so no price matching is required.

This continues into most every facet of the experience. House brands (such as how Whirlpool made Kenmore appliances); perpetual sales; massive and ever-changing model names; sleazy sales practices.

The best overall advice (and you actually did it just right) is: (a) don’t time your purchase to the “sales”; (b) set a reasonable budget of less than $1000 and stick to it; (c) try it out before you buy it and see if it’s comfortable to you; (d) stick to large national retailers to skip the worst of the sales practices.

So, personally, I’d wager that the “sale” was bogus and that the same model (likely a “similar” model as the model names are ever-changing) will be just about the same cost come January, or April, or whenever.

Thank heavens we don’t have to buy bedding every year!