Inside an Amazon and Target liquidation center: photos

I visited Everyday Crazy Hot Deals in Bethpage, NY on three different days in January to see how the products vary.

Source: KJOY 98.3

Since I was there on a Saturday, every item in the store – with a few exceptions – was $12. The price gets cheaper as the week gets closer to Thursday, the day when the store restocks. Items are most expensive on the weekends when new inventory is added.

The bins weren’t organized by product category, so I sorted through stacks of random items. The most common items I saw were boxes of face masks.

I didn’t have anything specific I wanted to buy, so I randomly searched the trash cans for items that caught my eye. Some of the things that caught my eye were a gratitude journal, the board game Operation, bait to kill cockroaches, a vibrator, spooky Halloween costume masks, and some wigs.

Many of the packages were torn, empty, or missing an item.

Customers are not allowed to open sealed packages. If you want to know what’s inside, you have to take the goods to the customer service stand, where an employee will open them.

While most bins held a random assortment of stuff, some items were organized by type with special offers, like this clothes rack…

There were also containers of makeup sold for $3 each…

…and these iPhone and Android phone cases — including popular brands like Otter — priced five for $2.

There were even boxes of Halloween treats like Haribo Gummy Bears and Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. The bags of candy I looked at had not expired, although the store has a sign advising customers to check the expiration date before purchasing groceries.

Some of the “tidy” bins were just as sloppy as the regular ones, like this plastic bin filled with tangled cords, cords, and laptop chargers.

Exceptions to the fixed price rule were items such as furniture and large toy boxes.

The most expensive items I saw were electronics items like a Google Nest doorbell and a Samsung Galaxy Watch 4 near the checkout. Each cost $150.

As I was browsing the store, a clerk pulled out a fresh box of stuff, which all the shoppers searched.

While some people only come to buy cheap stuff, the store said it encourages shoppers to buy things they can resell individually at a higher price. There were a few shoppers who looked like teenagers looking up the price of items on their phones and discussing whether to resell them on TikTok.

Source: Crazy Hot Deals

After spending nearly an hour and a half carefully searching each trash can, I couldn’t find anything I liked that I thought was worth $12 that day. So I decided to return on a Wednesday when everything is a dollar.

When I came back the following Wednesday, the trash cans contained fewer items, and the items that were left were even more random than before. Many of the items had damaged packaging or loose parts that came from the original product.