Penny Shopping At Home Depot: How It’s Done

If you’re up for challenges or enjoy finding great deals like a treasure hunt, then learning how to penny shop at Home Depot may be for you. Shopping for pennies not only gives you great satisfaction knowing you got a fantastic deal; it also, of course helps you save a lot of money. 

Let’s learn the ins and outs of Home Depot’s clearance pricing and policies, and know the steps to take to pull off this fun challenge of penny shopping from beginning to end.

We’ll start with getting familiar with the basics such as the things you need to know like why the penny prices happen, where to find them, how to figure out the prices by looking at the tags, how to price check, and everything from finding these great deals to checking out.

Things You Need to Know

How and Why Penny Prices Happen

When items get put on clearance, a countdown for the duration of their stay in the store starts. What you need to know is this: after a certain amount of time on clearance, items that have not been purchased have to be destroyed or thrown out by the employees. 

When scanned, these unwanted items automatically show up with a one cent price; and most of the time they don’t even show up in the inventory anymore. This usually happens after six to around more than eight months after the item ends up on clearance.   Often the employees don’t get around to pulling them from the shelf too quickly and this is where we can find these deals.

Not All Home Depot Stores are the Same

Employees and stores vary by location, so what may be available at your Home Depot may not be available at the Home Depot across town or in the city next to you. The first reason for this is stock and sales, while the second is that some employees may not get rid of all the items that they were supposed to have thrown out.

Additionally, you’d do well to remember that seasonal things may sell out faster or slower depending on when you shop.

You Might Not Get The Deal After All

Do yourself a favor and keep your penny shopping discreet, since some stores may confiscate your items if they find out, others don’t mind you getting these deals. Remember they were supposed to throw it out since those items were removed from the store inventory.

Now if they confiscate it – it’s not an issue.  You aren’t in any trouble, this is not illegal and you’re not doing anything wrong.  Plus, you’re not the first penny shopper they have ever met.

If you do get unlucky and are asked by an employee to surrender the penny item, just do it. You can try and plead your case and tell them how much you were really looking forward to having that item, but they aren’t required to allow you to purchase it for a penny.  

Some cashiers don’t notice, or care and others – just as in couponing take it upon themselves to police your shopping.  Just don’t sweat it, it’s not a huge deal. One thing you can do is not check out your penny items alone, check out other things with it and it’s less likely to draw attention to your penny purchases.

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Penny Shopping At Home Depot

Now that you know the basics, we’re moving to more detailed instructions on how to actually score these items. 

Know Where to Go

You can usually find Home Depot’s penny items in their clearance sections. These areas can be in the front, middle, or back of the store. However, you can also find penny items mixed in with Home Depot’s other regularly priced items, since most stores are big and the employees may not find all the items that need to be destroyed.

The easiest way you can identify penny items is by looking for items without price tags or those with yellow stickers. Yellow tagged items with big price differences usually end up penny priced, as do items that look old and dusty.

Learn How Their Clearance Pricing Works

You can hunt for cheap items by looking at their Born On Date or BOD stickers. Employees put these stickers on the items when they first enter the clearance sale. You’ll benefit from this because the further away from the BOD date your item is, the higher the chance that it’s going to be a penny.

Often if the item is at least four months into its clearance sale, it will be 50% off. Meanwhile, six months will be around 75% off and eight months and onwards are usually sold for the price of one cent. 

So, if you see something dated 04/13/19 and it’s September, it will be about fifty percent off. Likewise, an item tagged 01/13/19 by September should cost just a penny.

You should also check out the item’s tags: if the price ends in .06, it means 50% off while .03 is 75% off. The figures indicate month, which are six and three weeks respectively, and that time is the countdown of how long it would be before the item becomes one cent. 

Home Depot’s system automatically changes the price even if the employees haven’t gotten around to removing the penny items, and that’s what we’re looking for here.

Plus, normally the items with high prices that suddenly have big discounts on their tags usually end up as penny priced, too.

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Price Scan the Items Yourself

 If you ask an employee for a price check, they can go ahead and confiscate the items from you right then. So, your best bet would be to check the prices for yourself. 

One way to check it is by using the self checkout counter, which has the price check option. Alternatively, you can look for Pro Desk computers. Just take note of your desired item’s SKUs, UPCs, or names. 

Then, search for them on the Price Check app on the Pro Desk computers. Sometimes, the items will show up as penny priced. Other times, it won’t be there at all (because, again – remember they should have removed the item from the store) – and this means it will cost you just one cent, too.

Use Self Checkout

Now that you’ve found your treasures and are ready to call it a day, you can checkout. You can choose to use self checkout so that there is not an issue with an overzealous cashier.  Or you can checkout normally, remembering to add a few other items, too, and hope your cashier is ok with your purchases.

Penny shopping is fun whether it’s at Home Depot or other store that have penny sales.  Getting a great deal when shopping is like a fun game, and when you win it’s even better!  So get out there and bag yourself a great deal!