So I decided to make my first trip. I took about 2-3hours going through almost every isle and two trips to the pro desk to use the computer to check and look up skus and prices. My local HD doesn't have a customer computer hidden away elsewhere, but I pretty much stood there looking up everything I could without a single employee bugging me.
I really really wanted to get some cans of WD40, being 26 years old and a mechanical engineer that builds Battlebots and other random things, it would have been too useful to stock up. I sadly could not find the 1cent cans anywhere... I would have even paid a dollar for them.
I tried to find the 25' soaker hose, couldn't find it. I tried to find the hose reel, only found the following model:
Looked through the garage door openers, the trimmers, the chainsaws, the smart lighting switches.... I was coming up dry. At least I was getting an even better understanding of the store layout in ways I wouldn't normally think about.
Saw some duct tape that didn't seem like a good price, but I took a picture anyway:
Found a bunch of husky cabinet/garage storage kind of stuff in the back of the store on clearance that I am eager to watch:
As well as some wall mounted storage track system stuff:
Seems like they are making room for another variant to replace it, I saw it but forgot the brand name already.
This brings me to what I did end up finding...
My mom is a float supervisor/director type person for the Rose Parade floats. She actually just told me about losing a pair of flower pruner/cutters, so I went after the Corona Veggie cutters. I read about some people not even seeing the brand in their stores as the fiskars are taking over (saw that happening as well), but luckily I found a Corona cabinet of products outside in the garden department.
Alas, no veggie 1cent cutters... There were, however, two pair of Floral snips and a razor tooth pruning saw. My father loves to use a similar saw for breaking down small branches for disposal. I grabbed these even though they had a standard white tag label and took them up to the computer to check their prices. Low and behold, they had clearance prices!
The saw was $5.03 (normally just under $20):
The two pair of floral snips were $4.03 each (normally about $11-12):
My mother and father were very happy to receive these so I felt like my efforts paid off. I also got an extra pair of Floral snips and a pair of the elusive veggie cutters for free because there was a pair of each without any box totally trashed (dirty/rusty) and the garden lady told me to take them.
In fact, one of the floral snips has some light surface rust on them in the box... Some steel wool, oil, and maybe a touch up on a stone should bring all these cutters up to par.
I found one more item in the Garden area:
These had the tell tale signs of clearance for way too long. The tags were really weather aged and faded. I grabbed two of the three pair and took them to the computer with the snips I had obtained. The gloves didn't show up in the computer price check. I thought that was odd and wanted to take the chance and bring them up to the self check-out with my other items (Which I think is generally a good idea, to buy other items at more understandable prices and slip the 00.01 items in near the end. You can always return whatever else you buy if you really want to).
BOOM, my first penny deal on my first time with this knowledge:
So, I dropped my bags off in my car and wanted to see how the store would handle the following situation. I grabbed the last pair (and made sure I actually had a penny on me as I don't normally carry change). Went up to the garden checkout to confront the dreaded human interaction. It was poor timing as the previous garden lady was super backed up on tons of little plants of some other lady and garden lady called in assistance twice, apparently. A young male rang me up, but a manager-esque mid-aged lady had came to check-up on the situation with the garden department getting backed up.
Gloves scanned as 0.01 - young male goes "oh, it rang up as 0.01" and turned and asked manager-esque mid-aged lady about it. She pulled out some little notebook with handwritten notes and seemingly came up with some arbitrary price of $5 without directly talking to me. I kinda of questioned this price and the fact that it came up as 0.01 and it should be sold at that price with a corporate policy line tossed in there, but she wouldn't really have that and said something along the lines of, "It's not corporate policy, these gloves normally cost $10 and I will give you the price of $5." I turned down the gloves after asking to take a picture of both sides of the label but forgot to ask for her name if I ever care to send an email about it later (doubt it).
It wouldn't bug me so bad if it didn't seem like she had some random scribblings and kind of came up with the price of $5. The time it took for him to read the sku to this lady to find some random number in her book and assign a price seemed like a terrible act to me and has bugged me since. If it was some price scan type sheet that was typed I wouldn't have questioned this exchange or action so much. Oh well, I can't believe I got my first penny deal even if it was for some chinese made gloves.
I shall watch this for updates and might check-in with the two closest stores. One is newer and might not have old stock type things anyway, the other generally has way more items than my local store and might be perfect condition for penny deals. This is all in Southern California.
over the years I've learned it pays to be nice to the employees at these stores.
