To ask what your best ever bargain is?

[toddyhum]

I absolutely love finding a bargain. It gives me the hugest dopamine hit.

I think I've had my biggest ever bargain this week and I am absolutely over the moon.

I found an £8000 Selva furniture set on sideboard, bookcase and display cabinet on Facebook market place. The pieces are only a couple of years old.

It is all handmade in Italy and I cannot believe I managed to purchase it all for £600. I haven't stopped grinning since I picked it all up yesterday. It is the most beautiful furniture I have ever seen in my life.

Other bargains that have given me huge highs are

Immaculate Teak outdoor dining table and benches for £50 on eBay

Huge Loaf wodge velvet sofa was £4500 and found one for £600 at trade secret

I would absolutely love to know the mega special bargains you have found. Bargain sporn? I'm hoping I can get some second hand dopamine from your finds

£300 jeans for £4 in a charity shop. They were actually on the sale rail, down from £7. Someone didn’t know their brands. Annoyingly, they’re too small 🥲 Will pass them to my SIL.

My first car. A Daewoo lanos. 10 years old. Cost 600 quid - lasted another 10 years with minimal maintainance costs. Absolute bargain.

100 handmade, hand-carved antique Indian brass bells worth £300 for £2 the lot. My eyes popped out on stalks when I saw them.

A RJR summer dress in a charity shop on the £2 rail as it hadn't sold. Took it to the checkout and they charged me £1 as they were selling that rail off half price as it was near to closing time....

I've booked a cruise for the end of jan. Flying to Tenerife, boarding the ship, a weeks sailing the med with all food and activities included, £450.

Christmas crackers being sold off in January at Aldi for 9p a dozen a few years back. I bought 3 boxes, and now have none left. I wish I'd bought more.

An original kenwood chef with the porcelain bowl at a brownie jumble sale for £3 many years ago. Been used loads since.

It's not a one off- but I'm always excited to visit the John smedley factory shop in Derbyshire. Beautiful merino wool jumpers for £45 which would sell for hundreds in the shop. I tried on a knitted jumpsuit as a joke last time I was there and it was so flattering (on my dumpy size 16 frame!) I had to buy it. £49 but would be £350 full price!

Plus the factory is beautiful, amazing walks and lovely pub lunches nearby- a great day out!

Green with envy at these !
Loving it though. What a great thread

These are amazing!

Waaaay back (2014, I think?) I booked three nights at a 3.5* “boutique” hotel in central Paris on Hotwire for 45 Euro a night - over Bastille Day weekend. As I suspected, it was a mistake. But I had no idea that it wasn’t just the price that was a mistake but the whole booking: the hotel in question said they had no relationship with Hotwire and no idea how their hotel ended up on the site.

Back then, Hotwire had a guarantee that if they couldn’t make good on the booking, they’d shift you to a different hotel of at least the same class in the same zone. Because it was so close to Bastille Day, just about everything was booked solid, and we ended up with a suite at the Shangri La. I think the complimentary toiletries cost more than we paid for the room!

Back in the Eighties, I bought a car at auction for £45. Got five years use out of it before the floor fell out.

Recently, I bought a 1960s Ercol Goldsmith rocking chair for £5 at a street sale.

Love a bargain. Some highlights

Ercol Bergere suite of two sofas and armchair £100 in charity shop

£80 Laura Mercier bath and body set for £1 raffle ticket

Not one but two Kenwood Chefs in a Debenhams clearance for £40 each.

John Galliano leather hobo bag for £20 in TKMaxx clearance

I bought a vintage-ish 6 place dinner service with sauce boat, vegetable dishes, serving platters and cups and saucers for £55 in a charity shop. Happened to see it for sale on E-bay a few months later and just one dinner plate was £25!

First visit to the US when the exchange rate was almost 2 dollars to the pound, I got a pair of Levis, a Tommy Hilfiger hoodie and pair of Timberland boots for less than $50.

My wedding dress.

I needed a posh dress for a festival (Lost Vagueness if anyone remembers) and found a beautiful, eau-de-nil Vera Wang wedding/bridesmaid dress in local charity shop.

Perfect condition, utterly plain and slinky. Wore it to the festival and then some 10+ years later wore it as my wedding dress.

£20. I know bugger all about designers but even I had to sit down and hyperventilate after getting that!

Husband's friend does house clearances. He sold us a very nice car, sight unseen, which had been sitting unused in a garage for seven years. It had just 30,000 miles on it and we paid £600. We bought new tyres and a new battery and it ran beautifully for 16 years. I think we may finally be about to scrap it.

The perfect, super flattering £200+ rain coat from Patagonia for £6 from a normally overpriced charity shop. It lasted for about 5 years until I lost it on a day out 😢
Patagonia sells a similar model but it's not the same and I can't afford it, let alone losing another. Sadly the hype for outdoor brands has made them £££ on eBay too.

Dd1 car, bought for £4k driven for 3 years and someone wrote it off, the insurance paid out £4.5k.

Is that on Azura, amazing offers on there this year.

We’re doing it in February, £1000 each in a balcony with £500 on board spend.

Ten years ago, I used to regularly take my two kids to stay in the Covent Garden Travelodge family room for £12 a night. Total. Also, at that time both the coach to London and the Travelodge all-you-can-eat breakfast (not very yummy, but still) let you take TWO children for free with one paying adult.

Popped into m&s today. They had last of the xmas stuff.
10p a roll of wrap got 15 (some for parents) 5p tags
10p packs of cards
50p crackers
The Percy pig letter box tin with pink chocolate coins 10p

I went for a cake came out with bags full of xmas stuff for a tenner.

My sister used to volunteer to be "bumped" from an overbooked flight. Often the compensation was excellent. For example, the airline might fly her out just a few hours later, as well as giving her a voucher for an additional flight which she could use any time. She tended to fly at popular times, so her flights were very often oversold.

Once she had a streak in which she flew something like six times in a row for the price of one original ticket!

Marc Jacobsen bag in Oxfam, £50.

That's Marc Jacobs. Would have been £400 new at the time.

I love bargain hunting. My recent find are my solid wardrobes. Somebody had them inbuilt and then had them dismantled when they moved home. Couldn't put them back together again so put them on facebook. I bought them for £100. DH spent about 4 hours and put them all back together and managed to fit them perfectly in our walk in wardrobe. Anybody who has seen them doesnt believe i paid £100.

Brand new plain white Royal Doulton dinner sets from Debenhams at £2 a set and £3.99 postage and packing. I ordered 4 sets. Best bargain ever.