Thrifty Thursday

I normally don't buy too much on eBay these days.  It seems like people unfairly jack up the shipping price and I end up paying either the same price as in the stores or close to.  Remember those days when buying on eBay was a steal.  I do check it out items I want from time to time.  

Recently, I signed up for daily alerts and received a $2 coupon.  Okay, I thought I can do this. 

Challenge 1: Can I find something for $2 and not pay any extra?  The coupon stated that shipping could not be applied against the coupon. 

Challenge 2:  Find something with free shipping.  I remember a while back looking at coupons on eBay.  I thought, how funny to buy coupons.  I searched the baby coupons that I would use.  Most of these expired in a couple weeks and were in lots of 10 or more.  Okay, I'm not going to use 10 diaper coupons even if I can save $1 per package. But they had free shipping.  So I searched grocery coupons.  Here I found several people auctioning off lots of 100 random grocery coupons, but most were selling at $3 or more.  Most had free shipping. 

Challenge 3:  To bid on one of those lots of coupons for under $2 with free shipping and win.  So, I bid on one and lost.  I actually ended up bidding on four different auctions that were ending within a half hour. I bid on each separately until it ended or I lost.  I eventually won 100 coupons for $1.75 with free shipping.  I was able to use my $2 coupons and didn't have to pay anything.   I figure even if I get a few coupons I can use, I might actually come out ahead. Especially since I'm having a hard time cashing in Internet coupons. 

I'm still waiting for the coupons.  Stay tuned for next Thursday's thrifty post to see what I got!