Gene,

I bought some canning jars on sale at Wal-Mart earlier this week, so you might check your Wal-Mart too. Ours had most of the Ball and Kerr jars for $6.00 a case. I only bought some half-pints for jelly, but the next time I am in there, I'll get some pints. I don't can much in quarts. The Wal-Mart in Gainesville, TX, was seriously trying to clear out the jars--with quarts, pints and half-pints for $6.00 a case, wide-mouthed or regular. They had the small 4-oz jars for $5.00 a case.

I'd been in Tractor Supply right before going into Wal-Mart, and they had the same prices that are in your ad insert, but I thought I'd take a chance on seeing if Wal-Mart had theirs on clearance yet, and I'm glad I waited to check at Wal-Mart.

At this time of year, I tend to stock up on jars, lids, rings, labels, pectin, etc. as the local stores are clearing them out. Tractor Supply usually runs their clearance prices earlier, but I get better deals most of the time from Wal-Mart. This year, our Wal-Mart in Gainesville had trouble keeping jars on the shelves in May and June because both the main tomato harvest and stone fruit harvest began about a month early due to the extremely early last freeze and early warm up. So, ever since then, you can tell they have ordered more, more, and more and the shelves are way overstocked now because the main tomato and fruit season have ended, and the pickling season has as well. A lot of us down here are still canning peppers, though, and quite a few folks are still canning okra. The overstock of supplies is not necessarily a bad thing, because it means more clearance bargains for those of us who can.

Last year's drought was so bad that the stores had shelves of jars that never sold, but the stores seemed reluctant to take a loss on the jars and cleared them out later than they are this year.

I have found the Wal-Mart clearance prices on canning items are highly variable. Often, the Wal-mart in Ardmore doesn't clear out their canning supplies nearly as early as the one down in Gainesville, so I am able to stock up from the sales in both stores--but not necessarily at the same time.

Dawn

Thanks, Gene. I'll stop by Atwoods (and Walmart) when I go out tomorrow. Always looking for the best deals.

bon

I will look at Walmart again. I don't think I really need anymore, but at $5-$6 a case I would probably buy anyway. I have NEVER seen my Walmart put jars on sale. I checked them a couple of weeks ago and they had the most I have ever seen in this store, and a ton of big mouth quarts. I checked in two locations in the store and they were marked $12.44. I am not sure I will ever need them badly enough to pay that price.

In fact, someone is giving me some jars today and I turned down the quarts because I don't do a lot of quarts anymore. I don't even know how many I am getting, but at some point they always seem to get used.

Carol, If your store doesn't have the jars on sale yet, just watch and I bet they will. The Gainesville store had to put them on clearance early, I think, because they have far too many and are piled up all over the store. I've been looking at the piles of jars in the store forever and wondering when the clearance would begin. Last year they didn't put them on sale until well into September, well after TSC had already cleared out all their jars.

I have so many filled pints and quarts in the pantry that I don't think I need many of either--well, maybe a few cases of pints to replace however many jars of salsa we give away at Christmas, but I always need more jelly jars because I give away so many of them.

I suspect that at Wal-Mart, the jar clearance sales are decided by each store manager on an "as needed" basis because Ardmore really discounts the prices some years and Gainesville doesn't, or vice versa. At TSC the price reduction seems to come from corporate and be at the same times in the stores here every year.

I think the quarts here were only $11.44 to begin with, but maybe it is just that I don't remember. I only bought one case of quart jars this entire year. One year our Lowe's had a great jar clearance sale, but this year the Lowe's near us didn't have canning supplies at all. I think it is hard for the stores, unless their buyers are gardeners/canners, to understand why demand for jars can be so high some years and almost nonexistent in other years.

Dawn

I stopped in Walmart this afternoon. They had a LOT and I mean a LOT of cases. But unfortunately they were all regular price. Pints were $10.24 a case and quarts were $10.74 a case. So much for Walmart saving me money. I can beat that price at the grocery store. I will stop by again next week and see if they are priced to clear out.

I get around town a lot in my job. This gives me the opportunity to check out different stores. It's strange how some Lowe's stores have the Ball display and some don't. And some Lowe's have a large supply and some just a tiny bit. It's interesting to ask a sales associate why and some give me really strange and non-sensical answers that don't make any sense. Makes me laugh a bit.
Same thing at different walmarts, groceries, hardware stores. Due to my job situation I get around town a lot and can really compare prices, clearances, etc and snap up some good deals when I find them.

I cant remember if I already posted about the coupon at United grocery. It is for 2.00 off of one case. only good at united but they sell the case for 7. to 8. The coupon is good until august 30th. I am waiting to see if they mark them down before I go back. I need 20 or 30 cases.
Kim

Y'all need to live closer to my end of the state. It is too bad that other Wal-Mart stores are not yet clearing out the jars like the one here. Hopefully they will be doing so soon. I'm really far south, so maybe the Wal-Mart stores further north just aren't ready to believe that canning season is slacking off and the jars aren't going to sell.

Kim, Is United a chain store or a local store? That sounds like a good deal. After all the extra jars we bought this year to deal with the huge tomato glut, I'm not in the mood to buy a lot more. However, we give away a couple hundred jars of goodies a year, so I always need to buy more jars than I think I will when the next year rolls around.

Dawn

Dawn
It is a chain. I know there is one at Altus but I am not sure where else in oklahoma. There is not any in the north central Tx. area, just the panhandle.
They also go by Market or Amigos.
With pears coming fast in abundance I will need many jars!
Kim

Kim,

Thanks for the reply. Any chain that has coupons for canning jars would be welcome here!

Sounds like you're going to be busy with pears for a while.

Dawn

I got lucky today. I was in the Sunflower/Sprouts Market at NW 63 & May in OKC this evening. They had a shopping buggy by the front that was filled with canning lids-rings and pectin. No jars. These were the Ball brand box with lids and rings/bands for only 99 cents!!! Woo Hoo! I asked the clerk when they started selling canning supplies as I had never seen them there before. He said he was baffled because they didn't and he didn't know exactly how they got them but they were selling like hotcakes. They had the narrow and wide mouth for 99cents and the low sugar pectin also for 99 cents. Clerk thought since they had just completed the merger with Sprouts and new merchandise was coming in he assumed that it was just something the warehouse sent them to clear out. I bought 20 boxes of narrow and wide and a couple of the pectin. He said he didn't think they were going to start carrying canning product "but you never know".

The walmart just off of Reno & MacArthur has a LOT of canning jars but they are still full price. I am going to check back twice a week and when they put them on clearance I am going to stock up for next year.

Gene, You did get lucky!

So far I have purchased 12 cases of jars for $6 each at Wal-Mart---six cases of crytal quilted jelly jars and six cases of wide-mouth pints. I hope to buy about another dozen cases, but they'll going pretty fast in Gainesville. The last time I was in Ardmore, theirs weren't on clearance yet, so if Gainesville's Wal-Mart sells out before I make it back down there, then I'll keep my eyes on the Ardmore store.

I completely lost track of how many jars I filled this summer, but from standing in the pantry door and looking in, I'll guestimate it at 400-500, so as we use that stuff, I'll be piling up jars for next summer. I always need more jars for salsa and jelly though, because we give away a lot as gifts, and generally most of those jars do not find their way back to us.

I love finding jars and other canning supplies on clearance in late summer. It sure beats paying full price for them in the spring and summer.

If you keep your eyes open, it is amazing how often you'll stumble across boxes of rings, lids, labels, pectin, etc. Sometimes I find them in stores where I've never noticed canning supplies too. The only thing I am careful to do is to check is the expiration dates on the pectin.

Dawn

I checked my WM again today and there are still no markdowns in the canning department. I have never seen any canning supplies on markdown even in the middle of the winter in my store.

Carol,

There's no rhyme or reason to what they do or how they do it. That's based on the fact I always look at the jars in whatever Wal-Mart store I'm in, and no two of them do things the same way.

I haven't seen the jars marked down at the Ardmore store yet this year, but some of the jars (though not all) are still marked down in Gainesville. So far, I've bought 18 cases at $6.00 per case, and I think that breaks down to 11 cases of half-pint quilted crystal jelly jars and 7 cases of wide-mouth pints. They were down to only 4 cases of half-pint jelly jars at the $6.00 clearance price the last time I looked last weekend, but they had gotten in a whole new shipment of jars and had completely refilled the once-almost-empty shelves. The new shipment? Those are back at full price. The clearance ones are on the end of another aisle near the canning aisle now, but not on the canning aisle. I expect that's so people won't think all the newly-arrived jars are on clearance. Is this not bizarre?

If my memory is correct, they have done this in the past, and the jars that have just arrived will be on clearance in 2 or 3 months. I don't know why they do it this way. It isn't like new jars have a shelf life or a 'sell by' date like food products do. To me, it makes no sense to clear out perfectly good jars on sale just to replace them with identical jars at full price. As long as this store does it in this way, I'll buying the clearance jars. It seems like Ardmore normally puts them on sale briefly in the middle of the summer when they have regular shipments coming in and no place to put them, but I didn't make it up to Ardmore much this summer. I do remember seeing quart jars at a slightly reduced price there in July, but I don't can that much in quarts. Their price wasn't cut much either, I think it was cut 44 cents per case.

Once they start really putting out more and more Christmas merchandise (the Gainesville store started putting Christmas stuff on the Garden Center shelves around Labor Day) in the store, they start clearing out lids, labels, pectin, etc. If I pay attention and always remember to check either the clearance aisle or canning aisle, I can get most all my canning supplies on clearance and rarely pay full price.

My best guess it that the manager of each store decides what to clear out and when. In that case, I hope the manager of the Gainesville store stays there forever. I like finding deals on jars.

Dawn

I once bought two pairs of pants there, and didn't wear them for awhile. When I did put them on, they were too small, although I had the same pants in another color in that size. I saw that they still had them on the floor for sale at the same price I had paid. When I took mine back they offered to give me a VERY reduced amount because of the coded date on the ticket. I told them to put them back in the bag and I would take them home and give them away, before I would give them back to WM. I probably still have them somewhere, but I just wasn't going to play their game. If it had been something seasonal or something they no longer carried, maybe I would have understood, but they wouldn't even trade for the same one. I don't think I have bought clothing there since except tee-shirts to wear in the garden.

I work near the Walmart at I-40/Reno & MacArthur in OKC. They have a LOT of them on the shelf and have not yet marked them down even one penny. They certainly aren't selling any at the high price they are marked.

I don't mean to start a walmart thread, but I rarely go to walmart anymore. They have changed too much over the years and I don't care much for them anymore. I get better prices at Crest Foods and Sunflower/Sprouts. And I believe I get treated better at those than walmart.