It's almost never worth it. Even if I value my time at minimum wage, which is $8.25/hr here, if I have to wait even 5hr in line, it'll need to justify a $41.25 savings before I'd bother. That's not considering in all the risks associated.
Considering the fact that I'm usually making several times more than minimum wage when I do freelance projects, I actually value my time much more than that. After calculating it out, if it's gonna take me 5hr in line (both getting in/out), I'll need to realistically save at least $300 over regular deals before I bother. Verdict: not happening, makes no economic sense.
Yes, there are deals in which you save >$300, but those usually involve ~15hr of waiting, which means I'll need to save almost ~$1000 to bother. So yeah, I'll even pass up $200 MacBook Pro if that was a Black Friday deal.
It's all economics.
