Oh, yes. I’ve gotten penny items before. There was a table of make-up and hair items
Ivy was shopping around so I stood there and dug through some of it and found about 10 items me or the girls could use. One thin dime. For, at least $50 worth of stuff.
Went back for more and it was gone.
When I lived in my old town, DG had the $0.01 items scattered through the store, and had the 1 cent price tags on them. I used to shop for the town’s Christmas project, and got a lot of stuff that way, cheap. Keeps it out of the landfill, until it belongs there.
Yeah, certain things are fine from the dollar store. Like greeting cards. My wife gets mad at me for buying things like birthday cards for her at the grocery store when I’m shopping for other stuff. “Why pay $6 anywhere else when you can get just as good a card for $1?” So for our most recent Anniversary, I made sure to pick up a card for her from the dollar store. Since we’d been talking vacations and eventual retirement plans, I chose a card with an image of a man and woman sitting on the beach holding hands, watching the sun set. And as it turned out, she got me the very same card. Decent quality, not a big variety 
that is brilliant!
Those cards really are just as good. Maybe they came out last year instead of this year, but for the most part you can’t see a difference.
(Funny about you both buying the same card!!)
In the Midwest (and parts of the upper South), a town only attains “city” status if it has both a Dollar General and a Family Dollar.
I hate to brag, but my small town has Dollar General, Family Dollar AND Dollar Tree.