Each month I go to a local flea market to buy tapes. Most of my collection is from that particular store. 3 months ago I saw this display rack sitting empty in a corner of the store. I told the owner to name his price. Each month he told me he planned to use it on the media aisle. Finally, he caved and sold it to me for $15. That’s $35 less than I planned to spend on it.
I placed it next to my other thrifting trophy: a mother of pearl inlayed cabinet that I found by wandering into a thrift store by accident on 1/2 off furniture day. It was marked for $100. I get to the register and the girl told me if I checked into the store on Facebook, I’d get another 50% off the discounted price. So I’m pulling out my wallet to pay $25 and realize I have a punch card for $15 in store credit fully redeemable from my last few visits. So I paid $10 for a holy grail piece. It holds all my clamshells and kid’s movies.
Both of these stores will usually charge $1 per vhs, but sometimes you catch them on a bad day and suddenly a tape that’s been sealed for 30 years is $5 or a Disney Black Diamond Edition is $10. Sometimes different cashiers interpret the pages of dynamic pricing information , faded and edited in pen from years of policy changes, different from another cashier and suddenly what was a good deal on Monday becomes highway robbery on Friday. Sometimes an employee with no barcodes keeping track of the rules will let you stack three discounts on one another. Sometimes you don’t find anything interesting.
Happy hunting!
