My biggest customer gets them- Honest! When HD discontinues an item, it- along with old displays, returned merchandise, opened and damaged packages- gets warehoused and sorted into pallets of like items. Small groups get placed wherever they fit to fill a pallet, so a handful of flashlights might be shrink-wrapped to a pallet of toilets. The pallets are then sold at auction. It’s not the bargain utopia you might think it is though, because they disperse the bad products through all the pallets with the ‘good’ stuff so they aren’t left with anything they have to dispose of. Each pallet will have something ‘irresistible’ clearly shown with a pile of possible (probable?) junk underneath.
(RANT WARNING) So I get sent out to install non-working dishwashers (2 bad out of 3), ceiling fans with parts broken or missing (including no motors in display models!), faucets which have been scavenged for parts (last one had 2 ‘cold’ cartridges but looked new), broken wood parts I have to glue back before I can use them, door locks with cross-threaded screw-holes, and some downright ugly ceiling lights with oddball bulbs. I don’t know how the auctions are advertised but I wish this customer had never found them. Frustrating as you-know-what to do the same job 3 times over because of supplied untested junk parts even if I get paid for doing that. No fun having to wait a day to get another part so I can finish a job. Maybe you like taking 3 hours to do a 15 minute job but I don’t (Monday’s plumbing misery). Those are just the latest stats from the last couple week’s work for me; I’ve been going through this for a couple years with this guy. He gets my hourly rate so it doesn’t hurt me financially but I can’t plan anything nor can I finish a job in a decent time-frame. (END RANT)
So now you all know where the stuff goes when it leaves H-D’s shelves for the last time, but be forewarned- you’re last chance for a true bargain lies in this thread, not in those auctions. They know the auction game and play it well, and only the shrewdest ‘pickers’ can truly come out ahead at those auctions.
I wonder if we ever had those 3AAA's out here. I tried to look up the product code, but HD no longer lists it. Regardless, I'm swinging by a HD on the way home to see if we have any. It looks like it might look pretty cool with the bumpers off.
I go to Home Depot all the time and I don’t recall ever seeing these kind of clearance and sale items. Where in the stores are these usually displayed? I made a pass through my local HD yesterday specifically looking for the aluminum polish and saw nothing on sale/clearance.
It was right there exposed in the open… and all those employees and customers nearby probably had no clue that that switch was 1¢.
3 switches so far and 3 ceiling fans so far, so one more switch & fan to go.
(Btw when I was installing the wiring for the third fan, which we did not have one yet, we found a ceiling fan in the garbage. :bigsmile: Then soon afterwards I found the switch. hehe)
It IS exhilarating to have that special knowledge, something that no one else knows. There it is, out in the open, but ONLY you have the eyes to see. Sort of like being one of the enlightened ones, anointed.
the only penny deal I ever found was the 1 cent DST
if you had to only find one deal as a flashaholic i figure the Defiant Super thrower is about as good as it gets ….
I wonder if they ever sell refrigerators for a penny
Today we went to the Home Depots and at one Home Depot I checked for switches again even though I already checked before (or at least I think I did). And I found an Almond!!! :bigsmile:
That makes four switches!!! We now have four switches for our four ceiling fans in our other house! we just need a fourth ceiling fan. I always look at the clearances for a ceiling fan. We once saw one for $30 but we didn’t get it… huge regret. Hopefully we find one again… either from home depot or from someone’s trash.
The final Home Depot was a Home Depot that we do not go to very often. This Home Depot is a weird home depot… a very weird Home Depot. The shape of the building and the layout of the aisles is very weird. I hadn’t checked this Home Depot yet because we haven’t gone there but today we did so I checked. They didn’t have the usual booth of fan control switches, instead they were hanging on some of those metal things that hold merchandise and you find them everywhere. I looked around and… I found an almond!! YAY! But guess what? I found another almond right under that. And another under that. and so on. Turns out that entire metal hook thing (what are they called?) had almond switches!!! :bigsmile: YAAAAAAAAAY!!!
I collected them all but didn’t have any cart so that was kinda messy. It took a while to find a cart but in the meantime I used a 5 gal bucket.
I found 7 switches at that store. In total, I got 8 almonds today!!! :bigsmile:
I got $184 worth of merchandise for 8¢ today! HAH!
Added with the three others… $253 worth of merchandise for 11¢ total! YAY!
Anyone know anything about these lights. They look similar in shape to some of the lousy lights that came out last year. Are they 2AA's or 4AA's? Looks like 2AA's.
Btw, forgot to mention, I found an old pendant light on clearance that was discounted from undernear $100 to $18. It was really old (sticker was from 2014) and beat up (little or no packaging material, parts were all loose inside). I thought it really could be a penny. So I checked it. Nope. $18. :~
