Do you like yard sales and flea markets? They can be a very enjoyable way of looking for vintage furnishings and antiques. They can also be truly instructive if you use them to examine buyers’ behavior.

You can bet everyone at a yard sale is there because they want a bargain. These are not splurge buyers, they’re looking for a good deal – or at least they think they are. But being human, they’re not always completely rational about what constitutes a “good deal”.

We were out at the weekend with a few friends. Two of them, both quite smart and frugal individuals, were looking for the same thing – a rug for the family room. Both had looked at what was available in the shops and decided the prices were too high.

Simon was the first to find something – a Bani Ourain rug with smart black lozenges on a white ground. There was a small stain at one end, which probably would shift with some soap and elbow grease. It was $40.

“Wow,” he said; “These are $200, $300, in the shops.” He snapped it up.

Tara found a gorgeous Turkish kilim for $12. She found another for $10. Then she found a big Turkish rug for … $200.

“It’s lovely,” she said. “The colors are all-natural earth colors, and the pattern has a real nomad feel to it, all those abstract zig-zags. But… $200.”

She haggled it down to $150.

We had a little discussion later about who had got the best bargain.

•      I thought it was Tara’s two kilims. They were exceptionally cheap compared to what you’d normally buy for this quality. She probably would have to pay $150 or so each if she bought them in the shops.

•      But she didn’t feel they were a great deal. Instead, she thought getting $50 “off” the price of the big carpet was a fantastic deal.

•      Simon pointed out he’d got at least $160 off the price of the Bani Ourain rug. But Tara said the stain accounted for that.

Simon got a good deal with his rug, that’s for sure – if it cleans up all right. But let’s look at Tara’s reasoning.

She scored two cheap kilims. Then she fell in love with a carpet. Because she was in love with it, and because the stallholder had mentioned the first price of $200, she thought $150 was a great deal – despite the fact that the two kilims had cost a fraction of the price. It was still a good deal – but not as good as she thought it was.

She had also forgotten that she only needed one rug!

Now both Tara and Simon will tell you they’re frugal. And they do both find good deals, on flights and on insurance and groceries as well as on rugs. But you can see that given a discount on an expensive luxury, Tara fell for it. Simon, on the other hand, found a bargain and was willing to put up with its less than perfect condition to get a low price.

The moral is that sometimes, a ‘frugal’ purchaser will be so motivated by the saving they’re making that they forget what they’re actually spending. Tara was motivated by the $50 saving, not the $150 price tag.

And the moral for you, as an FBA seller, is that if you put that saving front and center, as a deep discount coupon offer, you’ll get the Taras of this world beating a path to your door. And you may get quite a few Simons looking for a deal, as well.