I stood in line for the MAC x Barbie Doll (actual doll) before school once. For MAC x Archie’s Girls, I barely slept, waking up every half hour to an hour to buy the collection!
We're here to help you make better beauty purchases that you'll enjoy and love! We recommend signing up to take advantage of personalized features like tracking products you own, viewing dupes that you already have, and more!
Here are some useful resources for you:
Curious how two shades compare to each other? Type in the shades below to get instant side-by-side swatches!
Comments that do not adhere to our comment policy may be removed. Discussion and debate are highly encouraged but we expect community members to participate respectfully. Please keep discussion on-topic, and if you have general feedback, a product review request, an off-topic question, or need technical support, please contact us!
Please help us streamline the comments' section and be more efficient: double-check the post above for more basic information like pricing, availability, and so on to make sure your question wasn't answered already. Comments alerting us to typos or small errors in the post are appreciated (!) but will typically be removed after errors are fixed (unless a response is needed).
We appreciate enthusiasm for new releases but ask readers to please hold questions regarding if/when a review will be posted as we can't commit to or guarantee product reviews. We don't want to set expectations and then disappoint readers as even products that are swatched don't always end up being reviewed due to time constraints and changes in priorities! Thank you for understanding!
We try to approve comments within 24 hours (and reply to them within 72 hours) but can sometimes get behind and appreciate your patience! 🙂 If you have general feedback, product review requests, off-topic questions, or need technical support, please contact us directly. Thank you for your patience!
Nothing too crazy. I think once I paid a little extra for a discontinued lipstick on Ebay. But mostly I just move on to another product. Not interested in jumping through hoops.
Nothing too interesting for me, I’ve never done anything more intense than buying something lightly used off a blog sale or pay a bit extra off eBay.
I don’t think I have ever done anything too crazy to get a particular limited edition product. I am sort of a fatalist and figure if I don’t get it then it wasn’t meant to be. Having said that, when the Violet Voss Holy Grail palette came on-line I was refreshing every few seconds trying to get the palette. I didn’t get it and I was very upset. When it came back in stock I was able to get two, one for me and one for my daughter. It was around the same time that the TF Sweet Peach palette came out and again it was sold out before I could get it and it said sold out before the time for release had even come. I made the decision then that I wasn’t going to get caught up in the hype anymore and even though the TF peach palette has re-released, I won’t be getting it. Much as I might want a particular product I have decided not to let it drive me crazy anymore, LOL.
I’m afraid I’m not all too gutsy about chasing down products. Or at least not very creative I guess. Other than pulling some all-nighters in order to get an UD Spectrum Palette….and no fruits from my lack of shuteye. And yet, I did get it, but not from my own sleep-deprived efforts! No, instead it resulted from my epically embarrassing meltdown on here, and a fellow reader going out on a major limb for someone she had never met before! Friends ever since!
I will admit, I’ve done the whole setting my alarm to go off multiple times during the night to get myself some very sought after MAC collection goodies!
MAC also made me do that more times than I can count over 3 years. It really has put me off all their LE stuff as well as the fact that it is LE. lol
Order from Guerlain Wu Luong from Harrods.
That was my first time purchase from Harrods.
Good experience for overseas. Better than Selfridges.
The Wu Luong was one year later. Could not find in the U.S., but Harrods had it up on the site.
Ooh, always wanted to score that! Gorgeous. Worth the hassle.
Nothing!
Nothing more than calling around to see if store had it OR ordering it online (which, for me, is a last-ditch effort as I don’t like to order things online).
I live in Perú and I buy online limited edition and discounted ítems during the year and send it to my aunt’s house in Florida and travel there once a year to pick up my stuff and finally enjoy them. I prefer to wait more time instead of not having them 🙂
called every state nearby til i found it in a shop in NY and drove 5 hours round trip to get it
..oh and i also had to find someone living in Europe last-minute and beg them to mail me an item i wanted to bid on from ebay.uk because the seller wouldn’t ship to the US. i’m actually surprised she didn’t just keep the item for herself when the seller shipped it to her since it was a fairly rare guerlain powder.
I have never done anything “crazy” for any collection. I don’t really care about their LE and after they screwed me on the Nutcracker Sweet collection, I don’t think I will ever go out of my way to get their LE stuff again. Funny you mention waking up for the Archie collection. I found much of it at the CCO. In fact I got the eyeshadow palette when the CCO put it on clearance.
I spent 12 hours stalking the MAC site for the Cinderella collection!
Wow. That’s another where much of it showed up at the CCO. Lol
Standing in line for hours to get some new and limited edition MAC collections !
Wait outside for the L’oreal event because my friend was invited. They have giveaways but they also sell with discounted prices so I let her buy me the new set they released.
Not anything ever. I figure easy come, easy go there are dupes and more coming where that came from. 🙂 It’s an age thing, I’m sure.
Surprisingly nothing. I haven’t reached that level of crazy yet despite my makeup obsession 🙂 (I mean obviously, I’ve stayed online for sales but I’ve never specifically gotten up early or stayed up late for them and I always keep a live connection during the day anyway so being connected wouldn’t really be anything crazy.)
I really haven’t done much in that regard, maybe because I was in my mid-fifties before I really started getting into makeup — too many other responsibilities and priorities going on in my life! Early in my newfound enthusiasm, there were some MAC LEs that I really wanted and missed completely. When I finally figured out/realized how limited some of the limited editions were — that they were never going to show up at my local counter in sufficient quantities for me to swatch them before deciding whether or not to buy — I’m pretty sure that was over the large Brook Shields eyeshadow palette that was really good quality and had several shades in it that I really wanted — it actually really turned me off MAC for a couple of years. It’s only been in the last couple of months that MAC has started to interest me again. And I still feel resentment when I think about that palette! So many of their LE palettes are mediocre quality at best, and, when they put out a really good one, only a tiny fraction of the people who wanted it could get it. It just seems like really perverse marketing to me. Why not make your great stuff available to those who want it? And now a couple of the Nutcracker Sweet mini-lipstick sets that I ordered as soon as they came out are on sale at Nordstroms, too late for me to get price-matching on them… lol, the hazards of retail!
Archie’s girl collection needs to come back for a short period of time. I thought that line was the best!
Once or twice I’ve stayed up like an hour later for a release or sale because it went live at like midnight PST (3am my time). But I obviously already stay up pretty late and it wasn’t a huge hardship. One time I actually ordered something off Kylie’s site (birthday collection) and it was intense but I got it first try. So, nothing major I guess. Also, one time I saw a TF Sweet Peach palette in Sephora and I grabbed it even though I had already decided I wasn’t going to get it, but it ended up being a great decision because it’s one of my favorite palettes ever.
If we’re talking ~anything~ then definitely Dark Lord Day at Three Floyds brewery. You get on their website on the day tickets go on sale and hit refresh until they do, tickets sell out in 5 minutes and cost $200, THEN you stand in line for over an hour to get into a festival where you stand in line for another 2 hours to buy 4 bottles of limited release beer for $20 each (that you need to bottle-age for at least 2 years). People bring their own beer and they also have stands selling different other beers, so everyone is drunk and dudes pee and puke everywhere and get in fights. It’s AWFUL, and I’ll never do it again.
For makeup: maybe paying double retail for a tube of MAC Punk Couture lipstick on ebay only to find out it’s a streaky, patchy mess on me :/
I know I’ve said this before. On one hand, I felt clever, for ‘getting away with it,’ but on the other hand, I felt foolish and slavish, and still didn’t get one lip I wanted. It was MAC Rocky Horror. Online was gone in a flash. So I signed out from work, drove an hour to a dedicated Mac store, got strange journey and crazed imagination, got back in the car, and drove back to work. Remember, even then I was over 65. WTF? No one asked where I had been. One coworker, who thought that was the ultimate in ballsy and I tried the products in the p’lot, when the day was over. I guess, if they aren’t paying you, and you are not on the clock, your time is your own. But it made me feel pretty daft, and idk if I’ve done ant LE frenzy since then. LE products that stayed around, like Chris Chang, yes, but no mad dashes when I should have been being productive, no alarm clocks for colourpop, or trying to hit Sephora online at the right time. If I don’t get it, pretty sure I have something like it. The upside of being overstashed.
Nothing. As I do love makeup, I don’t love it enough to stand in line and wait for it and LE are not intriguing enough for me. In general I am impatient and won’t stand in line for anything other than the food court at a mall but then that depends on how hungry I am LOL.
I looked through multiple websites til I found the blush/highlighter duo from MAC’s Nutcracker Sweet that I wanted in stock. (It was out of stock at MAC and the first few retailers’ websites I looked at.)
That’s it…I can’t imagine ever wanting something so much that I would expend more effort than that.
The MAC Selena launch was the absolute worst. Because no launch time was announced, I was sitting in front of my computer, refreshing it from 5 AM to 1PM ( 8 hrs) before it went live for me, then had to fight thru numerous computer glitches/website crashes to get the purchase to go thru. And the only thing I wanted was the Selena purple shadow, which I got (beautiful shade), but the whole experience was horrible. But I was still lucky I got early access because many Selena fans didn’t, and they got nothing at all, hoping the January re-stock goes better for them. I will get up early to stalk websites for hot LE products, but it’s maybe 4 times a year, but I won’t pay ebay prices for anything.
Well, I stood in line for 20 min for the MAC Cinderella palette, and I’v stayed up late for releases, but I’ve never done anything really intense. Once, though, I left my makeup bag in an airport with my Tarte Off-the-Cuff Blush palette from Holiday 2013 (their best blush palette ever – possibly THE best blush palette ever), and I momentarily considered paying $300 to buy a replacement off e-bay. But I talked myself down and it turned out I got my palette back! My makeup bag ended up in the airport lost and found. Someone had gone through and taken some of my stuff, including a brand new Laura Mercier palette I got to use exactly once, but miraculously they left the Tarte palette.
Don’t think I’d even be tempted like that now, though. Something else good always comes along.
Wow – I’m pretty amazed at some of the stories. I’ve never done anything crazy to get something myself; usually brands that do LE releases I like, I get to know the sales people and MUAs and they call me when what I’m waiting for comes in before putting it on display – and I appreciate it immensely. I try to route all my purchases through those individuals in appreciation. The “craziest” thing I can say I’ve done is waiting up a little bit later than I normally would have for the Anastasia sale on Black Friday; but even that’s pushing the crazy factor. I think it was maybe 30 mins later than I would have gone to sleep and it’s the only time I’d ever waited up for a sale honestly.
Stood up in -40 weather to get Rihanna’s collection smae with the rest of limited edition released in winter time ❄️?
Nothing.
While I have favorites from a product line, I don’t much go for limited edition items because my makeup collection is for use, not show, and I want to be able to re-purchase a favored item.
I have a MAC beret from a promotional. One time at the mall, all the MAC employees were wearing black berets with gold/bronze stars attached all over. I complimented them on their hats, and one of them said, you like it, you can have it. I wear a lot of berets in the winter so I said Really? And they had to wear it all weekend, but one of them left me one at the counter to pick up anytime after the weekend. I’ve forgotten which campaign it was from. Maybe two years ago? Summertime, I think – oddly enough. It might have been the campaign with Red Balloon and Head in the Clouds.
Christine that is something I would do. If I really want something I will do all kinds of crazy things to get it I am a bit relentless. It may take several days or maybe a month or two. While everyone is saying no it is sold out believe me I will find it somewhere somehow without going to Ebay to get it! Which I just did it took me a month or longer but I located a limited edition that is only being sold on Ebay but I found it in a store and was able to grab three of them the store wasn’t even aware that they had any left but I made them check for it they said they had a shade I already owned but the one I wanted was sold out for months so I asked if they could possibly check inside the boxes and see if they could possibly be miss marked which they probably thought I was Cra Cra but I was right and they were shocked and I got what I wanted.
I enlisted the help of a sales associate in LA to call all the boutiques and help me the only missing Louboutin Scarbè nail color I was missing.
She found ONE in NY!
Is it crazy to spend 99 Euro for a nail polish from a limited edition ? I think it is.
About a year after a DC MAC lipstick was gone, I paid $70ish on eBay for a tube of Miss Moffit. A frosty pinkish color. If lipstick did not become stale after so many years, I would do it again!
when chanel dragon got DC, this was around december, i decided in january that i wanted to own it, i had zero before hand.
i called EVERY chanel counter in all of houston to hunt those down.
and i even tried ebay (first and last time) to find coromandel (no counters had it), emailed chanel and surprisingly they replied back in 2 hours, i ordered it from CA, that person working that counter on the phone didn’t know what RAL was, and i prodded her for 20 minutes telling her that they had it in stock, she kept telling me she didn’t have it in stock.
i own 2 dragons, 2 phoenix, 2 coromandel, 1 mandarin
i have maybe used them altogether 5 times since.
I feel lucky that anything I’ve really wanted I’ve seen to have gotten fairly easily except when they discontinued one of my favourite perfumes( Diors Midnight Poison) and I just loved it so much I went on EBay and payed which I think are obscene prices for 4 large 100ml bottles…definitely felt guilty after..but now I’m glad I did it.
Ordered Tom Ford ‘Nude Dip’ from
Harrod’s, London. Worth it !
I did a car tour of all the mac shops in the area to get the Gareth Pugh collection. Was still missing the blush-and someone had just returned one to Nordstrom. Bought that up quick!!! They didnt even carry the line, if I remember correctly.
Did the same for Missoni at Target.
I can get crazy.
Coming from Australia I have had to use Hop Shop and Go to get an eye shadow palette – Lancome’s Sparkling Intoxication. And I ordered the bareminerals Playlist from Ireland….. Plus I stalked ebay for the Soft and Smoky palette too.
The first (and last) time I did anything “crazy” for a LE product was the Too Faced Sweet Peach palette. I spent hours refreshing the site, waiting for it to pop up. And of course it didn’t even go live the day it was promised. I gave up, went to bed, and then woke up at 3am and it was magically on the site and in stock, so my efforts did pay off. But ultimately I was disappointed with the palette and ended up selling it. Definitely not worth the time and stress. Never again.
Stayed up till Midnight to get the ABH So Hollywood highlighter… placed 2 orders with MAC and one with Macy’s just to get what I wanted from the Mariah Carey collection and I’m not even a fan of hers but the packaging won me over.
I forgot something! Way back, when Jean Paul Gaultier very first came out with his perfume, it was not available in the states. I agreed to house/pet sit for an entire week for a couple in exchange for bringing me the perfume from Germany. It was my signature scent for about a yr before it was available in the states. Then i switched.
Looked at your blog post about the Barbie doll, it’s cute especially the little train case! Do you still have it? The craziest thing I’ve done is buy Caroline Hirons’ second Cult Beauty box as soon as the notification came out. It sold out in 2 hours! If there is a limited edition product that I really want I will check to see if it’s in stock when they’re released, sometimes the release isn’t announced until a couple of days later, so I try to get in early so I can buy it before it goes out of stock or sells out! A good example is the Estee Lauder x Victoria Beckham Modern Mercury highlighter, it was worth getting in early!
I still have them (I ended up getting sent one, and then I had one), but they’re in a bag in a closet. Not really into Barbie, and I’m not entirely sure why it was such a big deal (at the time) to get them.
Stood in line at MAC for hours to get the Selena collection
I paid way too much for something about two years ago. Never again.
Spent entirely too much $ on a Tom Ford palette on eBay.
I just flew through Delhi and picked up a LE Chanel glossimer (#141 Maline) from 2010! I remember buying this shade in 2010 in Manila & the SA told me it was LE. How weird is that?
My sister’s favorite lipstick is NARS Christina. Of course, it was discontinued and she pined for it as though it was a lost love. Which it was.
So I found 18 of them on eBay and ordered them all for her. She keeps them in the fridge. I think that’s pretty much a lifetime supply, no?
I don’t know that this falls into the crazy category but a few Decembers ago, I called all over the US and spoke with YSL’s USA HQ looking for a discontinued YSL lipstick that my sister wears religiously. I learned it was an international shade sold in the US. After scouring eBay in Canada & the UK, I wrote a beauty editor looking for leads. He wrote back indicating he had one stashed in a beauty cupboard and would send it – no charge. My spouse made up an elaborate gift tag, from the beauty editor, of course, and we kept him in the loop throughout, sending a pic of her kissing the lipstick on Xmas morning. The irony was when she went back home after Christmas, she found 6 at her local Sephora…and I found 4 in town where we spent the holidays.
Since Chanel discontinues colors every 5 minutes, I once was desperate enough to buy what I thought was the same product from India. Not a good choice. Not the same color and the product was very old. I agree with you guys, move on to a better one.
I’ve stayed up all night a few times, but usually I don’t bother. Nothing crazier than that.
I’ve never been that anxious for a collection to go out of my way to get it. I have most of the better collections from Mac, from the past 13 years. If I like something, I buy in multiples, so it’s still in boxes-unused. It’s unique colors & formulas, so I don’t want to use them-but what a waste of products & money! Most of the recent collections are repromotes or not decent textures, so I don’t bother.
Not too crazy, but I ordered a limited edition palette that had just launched from my phone while waiting in a fast-moving line to board a plane! It was more stressful at the time because I knew it was a long flight and I had to make sure my order got through before the plane took off or else it could sell out by the time I landed. Epitome of first world problems, lol! 🙂
I have fallen for a few products claimed to be especial editions and bought a second of it if I really, really love it! But now I’m older and wise and not falling for that mess again. Also have everything I want a combination of some high end products as well as drugstore ones all working well for this addict. Lol! I think because my skin is fair its cilirs actually end up working for me if a blush turns out too harsh I been using a super light highliter to diffuse it and I blend everything to fatal attraction. I love makeup but wear it all natural but I’ll wear it even glitter on my eyelids once in a while such as now for the holidays or if I put in a grey sweater which makes me look like a ghost then I’ll wear that rouge blush and have fun experimenting with darker colors. I’m so surprised reading so much about Mac? I have never tried them (kind of hate it when they make so much fuss, so much advertising then try it and realize it is not all that hype) I pass by their counter and to me, the colors seem a bit on the orange/brown side which is not suitable to this ghost. I’ll need to check them out closely. I do love NARS, Elizabeth Arden and Clinique, these two have my exact colors, Body Shop also and others. Lots to learn still.
Ah where do I even begin? The fact that I waited 3+ months for MAC Star Trek to go into goodbyes or that I have been known to hunt down rare products over every imaginable website going as far as translating foreign language retailer sites to see if they’ll ship it to me and have managed to get things that have been sold out everywhere, or that I have had a US forwarding address for about 8 years, or that I shipped something from Hawaii to my friend’s friend’s fiance’s home in Atlanta, from where it will go to Dubai (where my friend is) and from there it will eventually come to Australia with one of our mutual friends, because shipping was as expensive as the price of the item and it was on a good discount.
Things you do when you don’t live in the US (or the UK)
Move to Germany? HAHA, just a coincidence. A holiday item I wanted from Guerlain sold out pretty quick, I got it Germany the next summer at a sale as they were getting rid of stock. For realsies, I drove to pick up things from my local Sephora for LE items a few times. That’s like 40 minutes round trip in no traffic!
Nothing. Which speaks volumes for my apathy and laziness. 🙂
I, too, waited for the MAC Barbie, only to have the girl in front of me get the last one. I ended up driving from Fullerton to Glendale (40 miles!) to get one.