This might be cheating (ah well, I'm in Canada anyway, so the prize might not matter), but this page at Dealmac might come in handy...

Hmm, although I think the comment above takes it... this is the best i could find at YesBuy. 100 pack of cd'rs at 24x, for $12.00. No rebate.

I was at bestbuy the other day, and they had spindles of 50 blanks for $2.99 at the checkout, as some sort of mass unloading of them. On their site I can only find 50 as cheap as 17 bucks.

I don't know if you're factoring in shipping but there's this one at OfficeMax. 50-pack for free after 2 mail-in-rebates (excluding shipping).

There's also this 50-pack from PNY for $7.99, no rebates.

Over at Computer Geeks, they have a 50 pack spindle for $11.95 or a 10 pack for $1.99.

Can anyone find cheap *unbranded* CD-Rs? I like to have a blank face on my discs, unfettered by the big TDK or some-such logos that can be avoided with the right product code.

Ooh! Good call, David. Blank face is a plus for the discs.

The discs I mentioned above are apparently unbranded : "Silver on top and Light Blue is the recording side"

Shop 4 Tech has always been my CDR buying place. Good prices and tons of different types of CDRs.

100PK 80MIN = $16

They also have 99MIN CDRs if your drive supports them. Pick different colors, etc. Never get less than 80min! No rebates, they also have blank face CDRs, check them out.

the best deal is here, obviously. free!

in the philippines you can get 1 CD-R for 10 american cents. but then i'd have to ship it, hehe

i just bought a 100 count spindle of hi-val cd-r at office max... $40 - $20 instant rebate - $20 mail in rebate = good business model. how/why do companies do that?

Jon, 100 CDs cost about $5 to make without cases. Assuming about 50% of the people who buy them will forget to send in the rebate, they can still make money.

Companies do that because most people don't turn in the rebate form. I have a friend who works in sales for TDK and only about 14% of their rebate forms come back. This is for CD-RW drives with rebates of $20-$40.

When they offer a rebate, sales increase, since the consumer deducts the amount of the rebate from the price in their head. ("Gee, that's $110 with a $30 rebate. I'm only paying $80.") But then the rebate forms don't get sent.

Speaking of rebates, CompUSA is advertising on the radio a 100 pack of CD-Rs for free after rebate. Friday and Saturday only.

Looks like Akash's no-rebate $7.99 deal is the best one, so a spindle for him and one for me. Thanks to everybody for playing along.

additionally, rebates are often paid by the manufacturer not the vendor. so OfficeMax sells you $20 of blank media, and HiValMegaGlobalCdCompany pays you back the $10 rebate, OfficeMax keeps your $10.

I think it's important to note that not all cdr's are created equal. Hi-Val discs, mentioned above, won't play in my old sony discman at all, and many blank-top silver discs seem to easily chip off (that silver stuff on the top is where the actual data is, so this is a very bad thing :)
You can easily get 50 TDK discs for under $20, and I'm usually happy with that. Bestbuy rebates seem to be the best deals anyhow, and I think they sell some decent quality discs.

froogle link, for posterity. I can't figure out how to return by price.