Americans have a tradition. The day after their Thanksgiving holiday stores all across the country slash prices to some of the lowest of the year. It’s the biggest bargain-hunting day around and just about every store takes part. It’s called Black Friday.

On Black Friday consumers go absolutely crazy. They line up outside of stores at 3:00 in the morning to be the first in the door at 4:00 or 5:00. Retailers offer “doorbuster” sales with extremely low prices to get people in the door. They might only carry a few. Limited quantities send people running like animals to be the first to get their hands on each year’s hottest products. Plasma TVs at nearly half their usual price, netbooks for well under USD$200, and Blu-Ray players for less than USD$100 are just a few of the deals being advertised by major retailers for this years Black Friday sales.

You don’t have to be in the States to take advantage of these deep discounts. In more recent years Black Friday sales have been complemented by Cyber Monday — the online equivalent of Black Friday. Where some Black Friday sales are only available in-store due to limited quantities in-stock, other sales are available directly on the Web.

Your Credit Card Can Save You Money

If you like to use your credit card to shop online, you might be able to get in on the savings. The entire four-day stretch from Black Friday to Cyber Monday (27 November to 30 November this year) is chock full of online deals.

Even factoring in costs for currency exchanges, you can save significantly if you can do one thing — find retailers that will ship to Australia. Many won’t. When you do find a gem, you’ll need to factor in the international shipping rates as well, but with the extreme sales this time of year chances are good you’ll still find better deals online from U.S. retailers than local stores.

Here is one of the biggest online retailers offering Black Friday specials, which will ship internationally:

Amazon.com – When you shop on the U.S. version of Amazon’s online store, you’ll see great deals during the after-Thanksgiving weekend. While there are a lot of items they won’t ship to Australia, they’ve been known to ship DVDs and books here (just make sure you have a multi-region DVD player so you can actually watch the movies).

Another option is to get a virtual U.S. address with a mail forwarding service. The service receives your mail for you and they’ll then forward it to you here in Australia for a fee. While it costs a bit extra, if you can save hundreds of dollars by taking advantage of the sale, it could be well worth it.

The sales overseas don’t stop with Cyber Monday. Some of the best deals are yet to come, right before Christmas. So even if you don’t have time to setup a virtual address with a mail forwarding service before Black Friday, you can still take advantage of the rest of the season, sure to be filled with great savings.