Dad would buy floor demo models of TV's and stereos and fridges/appliances. They were crap. Always.  Same with the living room and dining room furniture. Crap made to look quality; veneer over particle board kinda stuff.

Mom was what they used to call a "fishwife"; a champion haggler, a coupon clipper never above trying to slip an expired or ineligible coupon thru, or to bluff and bluster her way into getting a discount. After dad died, mom never tired of bringing out the "poor old widow woman" routine to cadge discounts and freebies everywhere from the grocery to the car mechanic and plumber.

My thing was dumpster diving at new construction sites, pulling clean new stuff trimmed or left over. I was able to soundproof an entire audio production room with leftover rockwool and carpeting and ceiling tile cutoffs, all brand new. Sometimes my wife would come along, looking for art materials or free good wood pieces for some project around the house.  We stopped when we got too old and inflexible to work the dumpsters, and by then we had everything we needed anyway.

Nowdays, this dumpster diving has been formalized into a business called the eight dollar store here. They took over an empty Pier One store. Filled it with big, wheeled table,s full of returned goods, loose, broken, b- stock, whatever... every category you can imagine, just higgledy-piggledy. Every item is eight dollars on Friday, and the price goes down by a dollar each day of the week until they close Thursday to re stock with new crap.  It's one of my dughters' favorite shopping activities, more fun and varied than most thrift shops. On the first day of the week, people line up in the cold to get in at opening, because there will be a limited amount of consumer electronics like laptops, projectors, boom boxes and Tv's for eight dollars.  But the place is bedlam: car parts next to women's underwear next to scuba gear next to kids' toys, clothing,... and for some reason, beauty shop wigs, unbagged, strewn throughout, like tribbles, or maybe golf course divots... kinda creepy, those...  Still, I go on the one-dollar day sometimes and bring home about ten bucks worth of finds that I'm pretty happy with.