June 10, 2026–My online shopping strategy is to haphazardly drop individual items into my shopping cart over a matter of weeks until I have enough to qualify for free shipping from this huge site named after a South American river. I am never in a hurry to buy more stuff. I don’t really care if my book on the Secret World of J. Willington Wimpy arrives tomorrow or a week from Tuesday, gladly.
The last time I peeked at my cart totals, I discovered I lacked six cents of hitting the magical $35 free shipping mark. Usually I get within a few bucks of “free,” so I don’t mind buying another $12-dollar book in order to avoid the $6.99 shipping fee. Of course enticing buyers to add one more purchase is the shopping giant’s strategy.
But six cents! Are cents even a thing anymore?
I was stumped. Then I had an idea. What, I wondered, could one actually purchase online that cost six cents? I turned that challenge into a shopping quest–which is the only way most men can enjoy shopping.
I wasn’t prepared for what I uncovered. I accidentally stumbled into a world of cheap things. There were pages and pages of items with no digits to the left of the decimal point. I’ll introduce it to readers as a quiz.
Of the following four items, which is the cheapest one you can buy online?
- a) Gushers Tropical Fruit Flavored Snacks
- b) REACH Waxed Dental Floss
- c) Nantdog Zenchic Bras for Women
- d) Hollow Butterfly Silver-Plated Necklace Pendant & Chain
(Cue Jeopardy theme music. Did you ever realize that the famous theme is nearly note for note the same as I’m A Little Teapot?)
Most people I surveyed removed the Zenchic Bra first. Unbelievably, that sells for under $2. After in-depth research on that item, including construction, colors, fit, and fashion, I still don’t see how they could make it so cheaply.
The floss is $1.79.
The Gushers are $1.
The winner as cheapest, non-free thing? Yes, the Hollow Butterfly Silver-Plated Necklace Pendant & Chain, coming in at 79 cents.
Someone commented this lineup comes across as a possible game that deserves to be on The Price Is Right. But it also transported me back to the times of many of our childhoods, when you actually could purchase satisfying things using palmfuls of pennies.
You really could buy penny candy, although by the time I had disposable income as a kid, Double Bubble bubble gum had doubled up to two cents a chunk.
Pixie Sticks, which were simply paper straws filled with colored sugar, were three cents. Candy bars were always a nickel.
Brach’s candy came in a bin. In our small-town dime store (yes, dime store) the clerk would weigh out the amount of candy you could afford, usually a dime or quarter’s worth. My favorite was the chocolate stars, swirly, over-sized chocolate-y chips, but with a flavor and texture that probably had nothing remotely to do with chocolate. Another non-chocolate chocolate-y option were bite-size Tootsie Rolls, those extruded brown logs that were not quite chocolate, not quite caramel, but that lasted a long time, even though you really didn’t want them to. But as a kid, you sought a high minutes-of-chewing-per-penny satisfaction ratio.
To recap, while penny candies long ago yielded to Five & Dime stores, which yielded to Dollar Stores, which are now $1.25 Stores, you can still go on the largest retail site on the planet and buy sweet things for pennies.
All that’s changed is that you need to buy 3,500 of them to qualify for Free Shipping.