Sean tells us that the store was empty down to 3 carts, which meant Circuit City did the only thing they could: They sold their fixtures.

Those yellow price tags you see in the image below are how much the shelves went for, which is what the BB people were there to buy. Everything was somewhere between $75 and $250, in case you were wondering.

Goodbye Circuit City. You were a store we went to before.

All of Giz's Circuit City coverage - Thanks Sean!

What's Up With Gift Cards?
"Customers holding Circuit City gift cards may redeem them at full value at our stores during the liquidation sales. Once the stores are closed and the company is out of business, the gift cards will have no value."

What's Up With My Extended Warranty?
"Circuit City Advantage Protection Plans (extended warranties) have been backed by third-party independent companies for more than 15 years and as a result, are not impacted by Circuit City's closing...For products covered under Circuit City Advantage, guests can call the toll-free number that is printed on the bottom of the product receipt.

What About My Extended Warranty From A Liquidation Sale?
"Yes, we're making no changes to our Circuit City Advantage Protection Plans. Coverage is national and purchases will still be protected just as they always were." (See extended warranty note above.)

What If Circuit City Is Currently Fixing My Computer?
"[Computer] services already underway at the liquidation stores will be completed promptly, but no additional jobs will be accepted at these stores."

Remember, especially in light of all these grim caveats, that the so-called deals may not be worth the trip. For more Circuit City closing factoids, hit the link. [Circuit City]

Other heroes include the companies and people with enough soul and generosity to donate prizes at the event, and loan us gear for display:

• Thank you to Sir James Dyson for lending us his super pink world's first bagless vacuum, and giving away some hand vacs to give away (and thanks Chris K for this and other assists!)
• Thank you to Julie and Lego for giving away not one but TWO Death Star sets and a bunch of other big sets. And for creating the glowing Gizmodo sign you saw as you walked in
• Thank you to Logitech for the docks and speakers and headset door prizes
• Thank you to the Zune team for donating Obama's secret favorite portable player to the charity
• Thank you to the Xbox team for giving us a 360 to give away as a prize
• Thank you to SanDisk and Carm for giving us Sansa 8GB Fuze, 8GB Clip, 8GB Ultra MicroSD card and so much more as prizes and Tots donations
• Thank you to Greg at Gama-go who gave away clothing and bag prizes
• Thank you to Jeff Staple, from Staple design, who let us use their space despite us being punks
• Thank you to NICO REYES, who was there every step of the way as we set up the space
• Thank you to Greg M for connecting us with Agent 18 iPod cases, Ten One Design Pogo iPhone stylus, the pink mStation Orb dock, the SmartShopper and the Hercules Wii Accessory Pack
• Thank you to TokyoFlash for kicking in some watches as prizes
• Thank you to Seth Herr for selflessly donating time and expertise to wiring up our 103-inch TV the day before Thanksgiving
• Thank you to the makers of that lovable Wi-Fi beanbag, Chumby
• Thank you to Wicked Laser for bringing the heat
• Thank you to TiVo for giving away an HD
• Thank you to Phil Torrone and Mark Frauenfelder for bringing the laser etcher and the giveaway Make Magazines
• Thank you to Keita at Sony for importing and convincing the Tokyo Archives to send some crazy bloggers their precious 1st Walkman and Mavica cam
• Thank you to Sara for lending me the Apple prototypes
• Thank you to Chris Mascari for working like a madman and staying creative through it all
• Thank you to Seung for working all weekend, and making endless runs to Gawker HQ and for shipping everything back
• Thank you to Gizmodo Japan for sending over the beautiful AU phones
• Thank you to Ryan Block from gdgt and Ben Heck for sending and entrusting us with the Atari VCSp
• Thank you to Giz NY staff for helping us work even though they weren't on the clock
• Thank you to Nick Denton and Doug Krone for getting behind the idea of the Giz Gallery
• Thank you to Panasonic (especially Chris and Jeff) for making the 103-incher happen in our 450-sq-ft space!
• Thank you to Mr Dragan for sending us a proto of the Draganfly X6
• Thank you to Jarred for lending us the RED One model
• Thank you to Philippe Kahn for sending us the first cameraphone
• Thank you to Chris B. for sharing his Blickensderfer typewriter and first Polaroid camera
• Thank you to stoner dude for sharing your NES bong with us
• Thank you to Jesús Diaz for his gorgeous artwork
• Thank you to Brad and Seth an the AT&T archivists for lending us rare Bell Labs technology

Thank you readers, too, for putting up with this intensely long Academy Award-type thank-you speech.

See you next year at the Gizmodo Gallery!

Basically, underperforming stores in certain regions are going to get shut down. This doesn't mean we are going out of business. Personally, I think that some stores can support themselves while others can't.

I know my store has a daily budget of about $38,000. We usually hit our budget and always make our goals, but some of the other stores in the region can't do that. There are still profitable stores even with the economy being crap. But then, the West Coast stores account for about 30% of the company's total revenue.

One of the store directors—obviously not from the Midwest—is quoted as saying that "we should have done this 10 years ago". The source points out that Circuit City is trying to refocus on the customer: "They are really stressing to us that we must have better customer service than before because they want us to win back our customers".

Update 1: David Cimino categorically denies that Sony truck turned around from a delivery to Circuit City distribution.

Update 2: Another Circuit City employee and Gizmodo reader jumps in about this:

I work at CC and we had a store meeting today in which we were explicitly told 155 stores were closing and a liquidity firm is going to take them over. Employees will be allowed to stay through that process if they wish. What the internal forum posting was saying was that the post about the truck of Sony products turning around or whatever was false, it has nothing to do with the store closings, which is definitely true. I have no idea if the Sony thing is true or not.

When we called up Helio stores, their people sounded like they were reading off a script, or that they've gotten a memo, and were trying to convince us that they shouldn't worry if Virgin takes them over. So in essence, Helio customers won't be plan-less if Virgin does take over their customers—you'll just be making out your checks to Virgin instead of Helio.

One of the commenters (centerpeace) last time pointed out that their strategy was to open up right next to a CompUSA and staff their stores with people who actually knew something about computers. Come to think of it, our PC Club was right next to a CompUSA too, which was weird since they were both out in the middle of nowhere. Guess when CompUSA took a dive and got resurreted by Tiger Direct, PC Club just had to follow. [Club IT - Image Credit]

[Thanks Russ!]

Over the last two years Polaroid has stopped production on the instant cameras and now it's the film, which will be available till around next year. It was only a matter of time till Polaroid killed off the film since it was obviously a declining / nonexistent profit. So for all those Polaroid users out there, were sorry, looks like you'll only have another year left to take random pictures at house parties. [Washington Post]

Plans are to immediately liquidate inventory in the closing locations. The melancholy list of sales, after the jump.

Alabama
Hoover, Huntsville

California
Mission Valley, Sports Arena, Escondido, Vista, Encinitas, Clairemont, Palm Desert, La Jolla, La Mesa
Temecula, Costa Mesa, Mission Viejo, Vista Regional Facility

Connecticut
North Haven, Crystal, Milford

Florida
West Kendall

Georgia
Athens, Gwinnett, Johnson Ferry, Town Center, Snellville, Fayetteville, Atlanta Regional Facility

Illinois
Century Centre, Michigan Ave, Crystal Lake, Gurnee

Massachusetts
Boston University, Saugus, Holyoke, Auburn

North Carolina
University Place

New Jersey
Mays Landing

New York
Albany, Saratoga

Pennsylvania
Walnut Street

Tennessee
Coolsprings/Franklin, Chattanooga, Nashville West-End, NOW/Knoxville

Texas
Dallas Parkway, Caruth Plaza, Frisco, Humble, Lewisville, Southlake, Katy, Plano

– Mark Wilson

Tweeter to Close [consumerist]

Also, a tipster tells us their training department (which made up of over 20% of their services) is closing as well. – Jason Chen

BREAKING: CompUSA Closing 128 Stores [Consumerist]

We can sort of anecdotally confirm this, as two local CompUSAs have had going out of business sales in the past few months. We would have checked them out, but the stores were hard to find and in inaccessible locations, which sort of explains the difficulty they're having attracting customers. – Jason Chen

EXCLUSIVE: CompUSA Closing 100 Stores [Consumerist]