Just out of curiosity, HAD you gotten an offer for that amount?
Joe
Kind of minor in comparison to some of the stories here, but:
On New Years Eve I was having a party with a few friends. We tried to order a pizza, but for some reason no one would deliver to my apartment at 11:30. We managed to find one place open across town (being in Lansing, this was quite surprising. It’s a fairly big town). My girlfriend managed to haggle them down to half price if we picked it up.
Ended up with 2 large pizzas with 4-5 toppings each for about $16 instead of $30.
That story was way cooler in my head.
Hey, you got a 46% knockdown in price. A better deal, probably, than anyone else in this thread. Pretty damn cool.
A friend and I had a mini yard sale a few months back. I had some books for sale, 50 cents for paperback and $1 for hardcover. Someone asked me what I wanted for a Robert Jordan hardcover. I said a dollar. She said “I’ll give you five dollars.” I said OK.
Forgive the slight hijack, but my MIL was on the flip side of something like this! When hubby and I were engaged, my mother wanted: a mother of the bride dress; preferrably green; didn’t want to spend more than $100.00 on it; didn’t want something flowy that might get caught in the wheels of her wheelchair. MIL and SIL were at a yard sale when they spotted the perfect gown for my mother. It met all the criteria. They asked the price, and the lady said “$1.50”. MIL and SIL looked so :eek: at that, that the woman quickly raised the price to $2.00! Still a bargain, though.
My dad was trying to sell a trumpet at the Portland Swap Meet. He just wanted to get rid of it, so he had it priced at an absurdly low $10. Lots of people picked it up, fiddled with it, and set it back down again–but no-one bought.
He had an inspiration and raised the price to $30. The next person who looked at it bought it. 
OOOh,I love haggling.
I yard sale quite a bit(looking to buy items for resale) and I am always amazed how far folks will drop on their items.One sale had a tool crib that fits in the back of a pickup truck priced at $20,I looked it over and asked if they had the key for it,they didn’t,so I asked how far they would come down on it,they dropped down to $10,I looked it over some more and offered $3.She hemmed and hawed a bit and said $5.I told her I didnt think it would fit in my truck when I started to leave she said “alright $3 is fine” so I bought it,took it back to my yard sale and sold it for $18 within a half hour.
Yep. I was shocked by their counter-offer actually… I didn’t MEAN to haggle, it just sort of happened.
This is absurd to the point of being a whoosh. If you don’t understand how economics work, then you deserve to be ripped off.
I enjoy haggling. My wife is better at it, although she doesn’t know how to recognize the squeal point and will keep trying to haggle when someone is clearly done. She did get a terrific lamp that was marked at $800 for 400, though. I was impressed. I always do the car buying, as she detests that whole milieu. My best haggle was for a few old coins in a market in Africa. I paid the guy about .50 each for them (they were worthless to him, since they weren’t currency of his country), then discovered later they were worth between $20-$80 each, which I didn’t know when I bought them.
I also bought a statue in Guatemala that I didn’t want. I made the mistake of picking it up to look at it. The shopkeeper said $20. I said I didn’t want it, just looking, and only had $2 in my wallet, which I showed him. He made a big show of being aggravated, and I left the shop. He chased me down the market fairway, statue in hand and took the $2.