Maybe I should avoid this thread since the penny deals or other major discounts (like the compressors) never appear in my area.
I think they do!
Those compressor deals go fast, if anyone is aware of them they go in minutes. In July I have seen evidence of them in every state I have been in. CT, MA,RI, and NY.
in late June and the first week in July I was in Ohio I searched for and found a few receipts from then and found SOME of the penny deals I found.
Ashtabula, Euclid and Mentor.
These 2 deals came from the Cleveland area. As I mentioned in a previous post, I just happened to be in the right spot for the 36V Makita circular saw. While I was in the store, they brought out 4 and they were grabbed immediately. Had I been in another part of the store at that time I would have never even known about it. I was very lucky to get the one!
Ditto, I have checked frequently at a few stores around me the last few months and in Texas it looks like penny deals basically don’t happen.
I see TONS of clearance items with dates going back as far as a year+ yet they always ring up for the sticker price.
The one and only exception to this were 2 of those dewalt tap holder things, I scanned them and they came up a penny but that is the one and only time I have seen an item even be different from the sticker price much less a penny no matter what the date is.
Funny thing is I actually found those Tap holders a few days before this thread.
I don’t know if the discounts are a regional thing? I will see 6 and even 0 priced items with dates going back well over 6 months and in many cases a year yet they insistently ring up for the stated price.
It is even more random than that in my experience, I pass two different Home Depots on my way to and from work, one of them still has the Energizer lanterns at full price, at least a month after I scored a pair of them for less than $5 a piece at the store closer to work.
I think the deals are out there, it just takes a lot of time, mental organization, and a huge amount of luck to score the really great bargains.
The other thing is to also not be trying to score a GREAT bargain; I just follow this thread and am happy to find anything for a penny even if the full price might have been say 5 bucks.
Don’t get me wrong, I am in no way upset or even annoyed by this thread or anyone by it. I am annoyed that my local home depots do not play by the “rules”. lol
Even the deal prices listed here are rarely the same at my local stores and after a few months I just came to realize it was not worth any special trips as there was virtually never anything on the clearance rack worth buying.
I get where you are coming from, of the two stores that I can hit fairly easily one has a clearance section the other doesn’t. One seems to be well managed and the other is complete chaos. I would think that the chaotic store would be ripe for deals but it seems to be the only building supply store in the area so nothing ever gets to clearance because the contractors have already bought it and put it in somebody’s house. If I figure out what people in Oakland don’t buy for their houses I may have a shot at a few deals 
I live in Oklahoma (and it may be the same in Texas), and everyone seems to shop at Home Depot and Lowes. Items that are very useful like tools and light fixtures are completely bought out before they get to the “3” price and the employees here seem to be very efficient at removing items the minute they get to the penny price. There were several big light fixtures I was watching that were at $35.03 and I knew they were about to go to a penny and I also knew I had to stop in shortly after the store opened at 6:00 to have a chance to grab them but I was running behind and didn’t stop. When I made my way over at lunch, they had been removed! I’ve seen the price checkers in several stores out here and they are on it first thing before any shoppers start hitting the store. The crusher is also not out back behind the store. It is in an area by the unloading dock in an aisle at the back that is off limits. I think Dchomak had a picture of the area with some items being carted back for destruction. the store manages out here must be OCD when it comes to pulling penny items because I can’t see regular employees being that gung-ho about it.
We seem generally not have the same deals reported by others. Penny items are also generally rare here, but once in a while we get lucky. I feel that some of the stores dchomak hits move a good amount of big-ticket, high margin product. I would think that management in such stores would be much more focused on moving the money makers and getting slow moving items out of the way. Down here were growth is still fairly slow, I think the stores are more reliant on the small stuff to survive. So they don’t deep discount as much. Just a hunch.
Yeah here in Alaska, things never get down very low before they are snached up.
I think you are right on.
Slow, under performing stores are easier to manage. It has gotten that when I first walk into a store I can “feel” how well I will do in finding deals. It is the busier, messier stores that yield the best results. That Ashtabula store in Ohio has always been tough. It is so slow and I am sure every item is accounted for. Last month however I finally found results. One item, a sink drain kit, came as a complete surprise. Wasn’t even looking for it.
Just today I went to a HD to get a sack of concrete. While I was there I checked out the cleaning supply section because I knew they were clearing out all of their Rubber Maid mops and poles.
24 oz pure cotton mop for $1.32, this is cheap, cheap cheap.
Here is the same mop sold with a mop pole for $3.20.j That same mop pole is STILL sold separately for $9.47
Anyway, while in the cleaning section I just happened to see something that sometimes leads to a penny deal. 2 different iterations of the same item. Here are 2 - 10” shower squeegee’s, one with an all white handle and one with an orange handle. There were lots of the white handled ones hanging on a hook with a price, but only 1 of the orange handled one which was on the lower shelf.
I scanned it with my HD app and it came back “not found”. That is a good indication of it being a penny. So I took it up to the self checkout and scanned the price. Yep, a penny.
Being as greedy as I am, I hunted in the back of the shelves for more and found another 7.
Just another way to find a penny deal. I found those knives and the USB chargers the same way. HD often times will upgrade their stock with a new, slightly different item. When they do, they sometimes clear out the old.
August 2, 2016, 11:26AM
Around here, and I really do believe that it is true for everywhere else, that EVERY DAY at least 1 item and probably many more go to a penny and get pulled.
I also believe that in that SAME store there are probably 50 other items sitting on shelves that would ring up for a penny. I just don’t know which ones they are.
When you go on an Easter Egg hunt, you just gotta believe those eggs are out there. Don’t believe that, and there just is no sense in looking for them, is there?
Also - I have found that outsourcing my research to dchomak has resulted in very good results. e.g. it was the maglites and armormax that i first started focusing on when i saw them pop-up in this thread through dchomak. then recently the ecosmart bulbs. i just go to the ‘Clearance’ section and to the other target section to see if anything dchomak has posted are available. then you start seeing the anomalies (items with no homes) and oddities. this has worked out better than trying to cast a wide net.
I finally scored two of these for a penny each! I took this picture a while back at the clearance rack at another store where it had come down to 6 price. The born date was different from what dchomak had reported. This store had about 5 in stock, but all were gone by the time the 3 price came rolling. Then I spotted 3 of these at another store with the same wind down schedule. This time, it still lived in the home automation section (not clearance), had no regular spot pricing, nor was it stickered with the discounted price. I knew this was ripe for picking! And it finally turned to a penny this week.
Now the remaining pokemon to capture is the 65 / 64 piece de-walt bit sets. also there is a 3 gallon compressor i have my eyes on with 5/2/2016 date that should be turning any day now…
Oatey Plumber Putty is on clearance for $2.20 to make room for the new stain-free plumber putty.
Damn radioshaq, you are one fire! Disciplined observation and memory seem to requisite to scoring deals at your and dchomak’s level. Best of luck your current targets.
radioshaq, congrats on your score!!!
You make a good point here. Just because an item doesn’t work out at one store, or at a particular point in time, doesn’t mean that you won’t find success in the future. For instance, I didn’t find out about the clearance sale on the compressors until AFTER my hometown HD had already cleared them out.
Other stores in the area marked theirs down later in the week and because I KNEW what had already happened in my hometown HD, I was ready.
Coincidentally, I scored an 8 Gallon 1 1/2 horse compressor today. For a penny! :innocent:
Here is a shot of the compressor just after I slid my penny in the slot and got my receipt. When I shot this pic I didn’t yet know if they were going to let me leave the store with it, but they did!
They were actually good natured about it.
When I was in the store I saw it hiding behind a floor model of a DeWalt upright.
The dead giveaway to me was “oil filled”
All the compressors that had been on clearance previously had been oil filled. They were all replaced with equivalents that were “oil free”
Here is a better shot of the receipt.
I KNEW when I saw this on the floor at this late date that it would ring up for a penny. Previously it had gone from $129 to $91.06 to $33.03. In fact I had purchased probably 6 of them over a period of a couple of weeks for myself and friends.
Here is a picture of the first time I saw this compressor at $33.03. This picture was taken at my hometown HD AFTER they had already sold thru.
(they would NOT sell me the display)
It turned out my hometown HD was the leading indicator of what was happening and I could have given up right then and there.
I didn’t, and found stock in other stores at $33.03, and now I have found one at a penny.
Surely a lesson to learn 
Here in Houston, all the HD I visit penny deals are NON EXISTENT!!! :rage:
I could post some pictures of barcodes of items that are a penny.
You could print them and price check the codes at your self checkout.
Then we would know.