Or more likely....they don't keep them "in stock" and are simply reboxing and shipping them when they arrive. Onkyo (or whoever their intermediate distributor is) probably rang them up and said "Hey, guess what? If you take these X number of extra units off our hands we'll give you an additional X percent discount." Or "Hey, we noticed you're just below our gold reseller level in terms of sales. If you make it to our platinum level, we'll retroactively credit you the X% difference in reseller discount. You only need another $50k in purchases to qualify." These end of the year "sales" are usually a means for folks that earn their living in sales to meet their quota for the year. Ho ho ho.

Best,