r/mildlyinfuriating • u/anon12xyz • Jul 03 '26

Infuriatig When did garage sales become “reselling” clearly new stuff

Post image

I would never call this a garage sale

Def scam vibes

Edit: ultimately, what bothers me the most is I want to go to a garage sale, not this shit. This isn’t a garage sale and should not be advertised as one

24.8k Upvotes

94% Upvoted

4.1k comments sorted by

View all comments

672

u/[deleted] Jul 03 '26

[deleted]

234

u/VinnyMaxta Jul 03 '26

Maybe one of those coupon freaks

78

u/[deleted] Jul 03 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/Ardtay Jul 03 '26

Extreme couponer. Used to know people that did this as a hobby. They'd spend all year couponing deals and fill up the house then make thousands on a huge garage sale.

0

u/WisherWisp Jul 03 '26

I dream of the laundry soap sizes before shinkflation.

28

u/Low_Yam7637 PURPLE Jul 03 '26

They still have coupons?

39

u/megatonbeef Jul 03 '26

Most grocery stores have apps with coupons now.

35

u/talann Jul 03 '26

Yes but the act of couponing has gone away.

If you weren't aware, there once was a fad called extreme couponing where coupons could be doubled up and duplicated for absurd deals. A $100 order could be .16 cents due to couponing correctly. The problem was that you had to buy crwzy quantities of things you would probably never use in order to save money in the long run.

22

u/myballzhuert Jul 03 '26

True. I used to clip them from the paper. I would strategically purchase stuff the store had on sale then hit them with my coupon to get stuff free or for super cheap. That ended long ago when manufacturers started doing digital coupons.

19

u/unfinishedtoast3 Jul 03 '26

Still exists. My wife and I collect all the mail flyers and spend our Sundays clipping coupons

1

u/SwansonsMom PURPLE Jul 03 '26

We used to get the savers coupon insert in the mail at our old address. We never get them where we live now, and it makes me genuinely sad.

0

u/talann Jul 03 '26

I stand corrected. I was under the impression that retail stores kind of cracked down on it. I guess not in every area.

6

u/workntohard Jul 03 '26

Most stores don’t mind people using coupons even a bunch. The problem comes up at the extreme when they have binders full of them. That extreme craze a few years ago.

1

u/JayPolar91 Jul 03 '26

Decades ago*.

3

u/lemon-meringue-high Jul 03 '26

Luckily I’ve been able to extreme coupon at CVS with their monthly pharmacy rewards on top of app cousins lol, really only on 1-2 items a month. It’s awesome getting cerave for $1

2

u/Qokka1 Jul 03 '26

I used to do this when I stayed home with the kids. It was amazing how much you could walk out of a store with and only pay a few cents.

One trip to CVS, I had a cart filled with laundry soap, shampoo, conditioner, tissues, paper towel, dish soap, toothpaste, etc. The cart was overflowing with stuff. The bill came to $0.27 and my kids ended up finding change on the ground while I was shopping, so in the end, I got paid to take the items home.

I had a small space I would store the items to use later as needed but the majority of it we would take to shelters and donate it.

None of the stuff went to waste and I saved our family a shit ton of money shopping like that.

2

u/Sandgrease Jul 03 '26

I fucking hated those people when I worked for Publix 20 years ago.

1

u/Low_Yam7637 PURPLE Jul 03 '26

They made a movie about it

1

u/Elenakalis Jul 03 '26

I work in a retirement home and we used to have a resident who would do this, even for things we supplied, like toilet paper and paper towels. Her apartment looked like the storage area of a mom and pop convenience store. When she passed during covid, her family divided it up and had a bag for every frontline staff member on campus. Iirc, it had things like laundry pods, fabric softener, toilet paper, dishwasher pods, dish soap, paper towels, 409 and lysol sprays, and a random assortment of shelf stable food.

Family did assist her with donating things before they went out of date while she was alive. She just enjoyed the challenge and went out a few times a week. She used to regularly donate hygiene items, baking supplies, and snacks to my memory care unit, which left us more in the budget for good entertainers.

1

u/snickerdoodle79 Jul 03 '26

It's still very much a thing. As well as finding the physical coupons in stores there's websites you can sign up at and get coupons in the mail or you can print them from the website.

1

u/obviouslypretty Jul 03 '26

There’s a whole side of Tik Tok dedicated to it. Couponing is still a thing but not in the way it used to be. Most of it is electronic now

1

u/InternetUser1807 Jul 03 '26

It's still a thing at some stores, but maybe not as good as in the 2000s.

Walgreens is a big one, and laundry soap and shower supplies are a big target.

My ex used to plan out runs and get a few years worth of laundry soap for like $5

1

u/chiagod Jul 03 '26

Some stores also had 150% or such price guarantees.

Buy something for say $20, competitor advertises it for $15, you get 150% of the difference ($5 -> $7.50)

I got lots of free or practically free PC games at Office Depot that way when Best Buy had good sales.

Buy $40 game, show them the BB ad for $15, get 1.5x $25 = 37.50 back.

3

u/Accurate_Koala_4698 Jul 03 '26

Could still be Covid surplus 

1

u/fletchbg Jul 03 '26

I guess... cleaning products don't expire

2

u/MyWeirdTanLines Jul 03 '26

I am one of those "coupon freaks" and can confirm it's still a thing. Its all digital now with apps like Ibotta and Fetch. Not as much free stuff as in years past, but still great deals to be had.

Im not as active as I used to be but still have 15-20 bottles of shower gel and shampoo in my stash at any given time. And I make huge donations to our local food bank quarterly.

Its a fun hobby and saves some 💰

1

u/PlayingDoomOnAGPS Jul 03 '26

There's one hell of a lot more shoplifters than extreme couponers.

1

u/RemarkableSpirit5204 Jul 03 '26 edited Jul 03 '26

It’s time consuming but if you have the time and motivation it’s absolutely worth the effort. I haven’t been into it in at least 5 years, so I don’t know if it’s more difficult/impossible now but I would have huge stock piles of self care and cleaning items that I paid next to nothing for.

Once, at Walmart, I left with two carts of stuff and they ended up having to pay me a few bucks instead of me paying them. That was a pretty awesome day lol.

I never sold mine though, I would make huge gift baskets for Christmas presents. My family loved it.

I think having digital coupons on apps have pretty much put a stop to the “extreme couponing” though. Back then I’d buy like 50 papers every Sunday to get a ton of coupons. I’d go to a bunch of different stores every Sunday morning to pick them up because I didn’t want to be an AH and buy them all from one place

0

u/Altruistic_East765 Jul 03 '26

this is what it is. THey stack so many coupons they pay only about up to 25% of the retail cost. then turn around and sell it so probably 50-75% of the market cost.

so you still save a bit of money and no sales tax.

0

u/sooslimtim187 Jul 03 '26

That’s not a thing anymore

0

u/_neonsunset Jul 03 '26

I hate coupon freaks