After researching its specs and ease-of-play, I'm looking at buying the Special edition for myself and the Anniversary edition as a gift. I wonder when, or if, they'll be put on sale. Enquiring minds want to know.

It just came out with a pretty hefty discount, so MAYBE the the end of the year sale?

It's Skyrim, there's no question of if; it'll definitely go on sale. As for when, well, most likely during the winter sale (December).

Put them on your wishlist and make sure wishlist alerts are enabled.

If you intend to install a lot of mods, then Skyrim certainly does not have "ease of play". Quite the opposite, in fact.

I.e. many mods are incompatible with the GOG version entirely, many mods are only compatible with older versions of Skyrim prior to the current version, many mods conflict with each other and cause the game not to work properly when they are used at the same time, etc. etc.

Thanks for this info. I'm a seasoned FPSer player looking to get into TES, so for now the vanilla version will be enough. I'm betting it'll still be a learning experience.