Sat 19th Apr 2008 02:05AM
Bargain hunting is a hobby many thrifty budgeters find enjoyable. Folks enjoy bargain hunting for various reasons. Some like the thrill of the chase and trying to see what kinds of treasures they will find at unbeatable prices. Others are on a tight budget and perhaps they have a large family and need to make money spread as far as it will go. And maybe for some it has become like an addiction because items come and go and if you stay home rather than go shopping, you might miss something.
Popular places to find bargains are wholesale stores, flea markets, swap meets, garage sales, estate sales, auctions and even self storage auctions.
Wholesale stores usually have overstock from what their affiliated retail chains could not sell. These items are brand new and still have the tags on them. Everything from wholesale clothing, wholesale furniture and home decoration, wholesale appliances and cookware and even wholesale building supplies are a great way to save over half of what you might expect to pay off the shelf of a big department store chain.
Flea markets are quite different from wholesale stores. A flea market is usually a large space where individual vendors rent booths or rooms to sell their merchandise from. The kinds of items you can find in a flea market are endless. Everything from sunglasses to glassware to clothing, hunting gear to books and childrens toys to cars may be for sale at a flea market. Some of these items are brand new and others may be gently used. Handmade arts and crafts are also popular items for sale at a flea market.
A swap meet is very similar to a flew market and the terminologies are interchangeable. One may be a more common term than another depending on the local region. The price of merchandise at a flea market or swap meet is considerably lower than average retail rates.
Garage sales, otherwise known as yard sales, are held by individual households. In some cases, a subdivision or block will coordinate a block sale in order to attract more bargain hunters into the area. The idea behind a garage sale is that a household can sell lightly used items to others who may need it. The seller gets rid of it and makes a little money back. The buyer got a bargain and recycled the item.
The types of items sold at a garage sale are vast and sometimes unusual. However, they are typically clothing, especially childrens clothing, toys, books, games, home decorations, and sometimes furniture.
Estate sales and auctions are a more serious form of a garage sale. Estate sales happen because of various circumstances that leave the owner in need of selling nearly everything they own. Finding a great bargain at an estate sale is one of the favorite hobbies of many bargain hunters.
Self storage auctions are another event that serious bargain shoppers wait for. Self storage auctions occur when a tenant fails to pay rent for several consecutive months or when a tenant has abandoned the property. At self storage auctions, the goal of the property owner is to recover some of the lost income from unpaid rent and, at the same time, clear out the items in the unit. Facilities conduct self storage auctions in various ways. One way is to auction off an entire unit as a sort of surprise grab bag to the bidder. Another way is to auction off individual items within the unit.
As you can see, the possibilities of bargain hunting are endless.
April 2007 Secret Shopping Blog Archive
Self Storage Article Directory - Furniture Storage
The original article is located at: Going Once, Going Twice, Sold!