Got it. Thanks for the clarification.
Good idea… looks like I saved between $1 and $1.50 (8 pack Duracell AA and AAA) from what I could find on-line.
Spud - which one’s your store? I’m headed over to the Allisonville/82nd street one soon.
116th and Keystone
I did see someone buying a full steak cut of some sort and the butcher said it would be 50% off.
What happens is that the owner already sold everything to a liquidation company so it’s not really a “Borders Liquidation”, it’s a “ACME Liquidation Assets, LLC sale” under a Borders sign.
The difference being that you’d expect Borders to be desperate to get rid of the stuff at any cost and discount it accordingly just to make back some money and minimize their losses. Instead, you’re dealing with a company out to make a profit on what they bought, just like any other store. Which is why these sales are usually disappointing for the typical consumer.
Batteries don’t last forever though, don’t stock up more than you can use short term.
Of course you could probably spend your limit on stuff you’d use all in the next few months anyway. You could get anything no more perishable than frozen foods to take advantage of the deal.
But if you buy $100 of small items, it’s the same savings as buying a $100 bottle of booze for $60. It doesn’t really make a difference if you buy big ticket or small ticket items. The one difference might be that it’s more unlikely that you’ll find a $100 bottle of booze for $60 elsewhere, whereas there might be a decent chance you’ll find a $3 item for $1.80. It depends on what you’re buying. The ultimate strategy would be to consider which items are very unlikely to go on sale anywhere, and get those. But, for me, I might as well buy anything and everything that is non-perishable that I regularly use (in other words, pantry staples), and maybe a few perishable things for dinner in the coming week.
I’m surprised that no one’s yet told you to get potatoes.
OK, I’m just going to say I don’t really understand how you’re doing the maths.
TP
One thing people often overlook is the cards. Birthday cards have a huge markup and are usually one of the first things to get marked down. The other things I found to be significantly cheaper were cleaning supplies and weird stuff like party supplies.
Not that hard. If you stock up on say, 10 units at 50% off, but end up throwing 9 of them away because they spoil before you can use them you’ve just 5 times what you’d normally pay for the one unit you actually used.
There’s a similar phenomenon that my wife used to do where she’d stock up on a year’s worth of something, say laundry detergent, because it was 5 or 6% off, but then she’d end up giving away all of it to friends or relatives because “we have so much and we don’t need all of it.” End result: we spent almost twice as much as we would have if we’d just paid full price as we used it.
It seems to me that the really good merchandise could be put on a truck and sent back to the distributor or wholesaler for more money than selling it at fifty or more percent off. I would think this would be especially true for high-value electronics.
Some stuff is perishable, or has an expiration date or is too expensive to return to the distributor, so in those cases, the store might want to sell it at a good price.
That’s because you’re looking at it wrong… I know that 40% equals 40%.
But, 6 months from now when someone says “we’re out of detergent” I can brag that I have more in the garage and I saved 40%… wasn’t that a wise thing to do… lets get some steaks to celebrate!" After all, if I had to run out then I’d have to spend $25 for a new jug… but I don’t have to so there is $25 dollars… plus I saved $10 dollars so we’ve got $35 extra!
It is sort of the same “special” math you do when you calculate if you came out ahead in Vegas. 
They finally posted the discounts… cards are 50% off. General Merchandise is 30% off (I assume includes cleaning supplies, batteries, etc.), and beer/wine, frozen foods, canned goods and I forget what else are 20%. everything else is 10%.
I’m waiting for the fixtures… one of those lighted soda fridges they have at the end of the check out lines would look good in my basement.
In my opinion, even at fifty percent off, greeting cards are still a rip-off. They’re basically just a folded piece of paperboard and normally you’re paying three or four or five bucks for it. I hate buying them.
My post would result in saving the greatest* amount* of money, not the greatest percentage.
Let’s say you use 3 bags of coffee every month and coffee costs $10 a bag. You’ll save $12 that you would have spent anyway.
Now let’s say you use 3 bars of soap, (unless you are Dude Robert), a month and soap costs a dollar. You will save $1.20.
Your strategy of buying things that rarely go on sale is a good idea. I have no idea what rarely goes on sale.
ISTM that it is like coupons in general - if you were going to buy it anyway, you save money. If you weren’t, you don’t.
I would stock up on non-perishables. But only of stuff I use. My mother-in-law bought non-perishables because they were on sale. It was five years ago, and we still haven’t used up the aluminum foil and waxed paper we inherited.
I wouldn’t buy more frozen food than I could use up in six months or less.
Regards,
Shodan
Or you could just buy 30 bars of soap, since soap doesn’t go bad and you’ll use it within a year, and you’re saving $12 you would have spent anyway, too. It doesn’t really matter either way.
I’d assume that the good stuff is included in the liquidation package deal because ACME Liquidation LLC isn’t interested in trying to move a bunch of clearance Betamax machines and uses the “10% off!” clearance 90" TV (based on highest possible MSRP) to offset the junk they’re selling for 65% off.
If the store had already offloaded the sweet stuff, no one would want to bother purchasing and liquidating the chaff.