Rant: guy at a garage sale in Reno told me 'never pay sticker for a toolbox' and now I see it everywhere
I went to a garage sale off Virginia Street in Reno last month and this older guy was selling a beat up rolling toolbox for $40. I asked if he would take $25 and he said 'son, nobody pays sticker for a toolbox, that's how you end up with a $300 box and no tools to put in it.' I laughed it off but then I started noticing the same chest at three different stores marked up $80 to $120 more than the sale price from two months back. A buddy of mine just dropped $340 on a box that was $219 over Labor Day and he didn't even check. Has anyone else noticed tool storage prices creeping up like this or is it just around here?
I read a piece on a home repair blog about how steel prices went up and it trickled down to tool storage. The guy who wrote it said the same thing happened back in 2008 and then again in 2021. He said the boxes get hit harder than the tools because they use more raw metal. A lot of the big brands also run sales that are not real sales, they just mark it up first and then drop it back to where it was. Your garage sale guy was right, the sticker is just a starting point and you can almost always do better if you wait or haggle.