Inside an Amazon and Target Liquidation Center: Photos

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

Source: KJOY 98.3 

Since I went on a Saturday, every item in the store — with some exceptions — was priced at $12. The price gets cheaper as the week approaches Thursday, the day the store gets restocked. Items are most expensive on the weekends once new inventory is added.

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

I didn’t have anything in particular I wanted to buy, so I haphazardly scanned the bins in search of items that stood out to me. Some of the things that caught my eye were a gratitude journal, the board game Operation, cockroach-killing bait, a vibrator, creepy Halloween costume masks, and some wigs.

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

Customers are not allowed to open sealed packages. If they want to know what’s inside, they must bring the items to the customer-service booth, where an employee will open them.

While the majority of bins contained a random assortment of stuff, some items were organized by type with special deals, like this rack of clothing …

There were also containers of makeup sold at $3 apiece …

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

There were even boxes of Halloween candy like Haribo gummy bears and Reese’s peanut-butter cups. The bags of candy I looked at were not expired, though the store has a sign warning customers to check the expiration date before purchasing any food.

Some of the “organized” bins were just as sloppy as the regular ones, like this plastic container filled with tangled-up cords, cables, and laptop chargers.

Exceptions to the set-price rule included items like furniture and big boxes of toys.

The most expensive items I saw were electronics, like a Google Nest Doorbell and a Samsung Galaxy Watch 4, near the cash register. Each was priced at $150.

As I was browsing the store, an employee pulled out a fresh bin of stuff that all the shoppers picked through.

While some people may come just to buy cheap stuff, the store said it encourages shoppers to buy things that 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 they could resell them on TikTok.

Source: Crazy Hot Deals

After spending nearly an hour and a half carefully looking through each bin, I wasn’t able to find anything I liked that I thought was worth $12 that day. So I decided to go back on a Wednesday when everything is a dollar.

When I visited again the following Wednesday, the bins contained less stuff, and the things that remained were even more random than before. Many of the items were broken packages or loose parts that came from the original product.