As a Costco member, I am used to buying certain items in large quantities, and I know that I am not alone.  I believe that Homeruns, or any other similar service, is well situated to offer large volume quantity discounts.  Given their value proposition, they do not need to match price with Costco or any other warehouse club (though, at the present time, Costco does not offer most of its grocery type items online as its current online strategy is to complement its warehouse stores).

When placing my order, I did notice one slight glitch in the Homeruns website.  When cruising the aisles (i.e., looking at items on the shelf), sku sizes for items are displayed (e.g., Diet Coke 2 ltr, or Mozzarella Cheese 12 oz.).  When looking into my shopping cart (and at the checkout counter), however, the sku sizes were missing (i.e., it read as Diet Coke  ltr, and Mozzarella Cheese   oz.).  I had to go back to viewing the aisles to make sure that I was getting the desired item sizes.  Could it have been my computer?  Perhaps, as I certainly understand that webpages can appear differently on different computer systems/monitors.  I can't imagine that this is the case for me as I just bought a new Pentium III system from Micron Electronics (smile).

Nevertheless, I am looking forward to receiving my first order.  I received a mailer (i.e., promotion notice through the mail) indicating that a free gift is being offered to first time buyers (before Oct. 15, 1999) who enter the proper code in the "find items" section (the code was 99041 -- Pepperidge Farm Milano cookies, 20 ct. package of Bigelow Earl Gray tea, and a 14 oz. package of Hershey's Kisses); I entered the code.  I am looking forward to my free gift and first grocery transaction experience.

I did pick up a couple more Batman items on ebay (when Amy learned of this, she commented, "there are two more items that will be going into holiday gift storage" -- :( poor Ben and Sam).  I also experienced entering in my highest bid price for an item;  I went as high as $265 for a particular Batman sericel (i.e., print), and was denied (the winning bidder did not make the reserve, so the item will probably be put back up for auction...I wish them well).  This item is something that I have been searching for since around May, 1999.  I'll find others.