Adam Chandler thought he was a Costco Wholesale (COST) expert. He owns head-to-toe Kirkland outfits. Then he wrote about Costco fandom for the Journal, several hundred readers wrote back, and he discovered he’s an amateur. A San Diego reader sang the praises of a 64-ounce jug of mayonnaise — by his own admission, “more than a human needs.” An Anchorage reader scored an 11-pound bag of turmeric on sale. And a man in Prescott, Ariz., went in for toilet paper and “left with a trampoline I didn’t know I needed.”
This weekend’s column gathers their tips for getting the most from a $65 membership, and the first is to think bigger. Readers pointed Chandler to gold bars at roughly $4,400 and to six different Bordeaux vintages from Château Giscours for $399 — and to diamonds: one husband gave his wife a three-carat band for their 30th anniversary, and a Colorado Springs shopper picked up a wedding ring (they run from $274 to $10,999) on the same trip as the cat food. Others found pianos, saunas and cars; a Massachusetts reader bought her 2016 Subaru Outback through Costco after calling other dealers to compare.
The rest is strategy. Visit other stores, since there are more than 650 U.S. warehouses and as much as 40% of a store’s stock can be local — a Sacramento reader called the Oahu store “akin to the retail version of a pilgrimage to the Vatican.” And don’t be shy about the famously forgiving return desk.
The math, and the trampoline
Two different things happen in a Costco cart, and they deserve two different rules. The bulk buy is arithmetic: the giant jug is cheaper per ounce only if you finish it before it turns, you have room to store it, and the cash wasn’t needed elsewhere. The treasure hunt is psychology. Stock that rotates in and out tells you today’s the only day to buy, which is how a toilet-paper run ends with a trampoline in the trunk.
Our read
The cash-flow fix (M5) is unglamorous and it works: write the budget before you grab the cart, include a small line for the find, and walk past anything over it. Price the bulk items per unit, and be honest about how much a household of your size really gets through. For the record, Costco (COST) itself is held at weight in 20 model books; nothing added. Owning the stock and filling the cart are separate decisions.
Gold bars get their own paragraph, because they’re an investment parked next to the snacks. A bar typically costs the metal’s value plus a premium; selling it later usually means a dealer who buys below what they sell for; and it needs somewhere safe to live, which costs money too. It pays no income, and the metal moves — gold settled at $4,133.70 an ounce Friday and is down 4.44% for the year, per the paper’s market tables. None of that makes a bar a bad idea; it just isn’t a grocery item. Our own gold exposure, iShares Gold Trust (IAU), is held at weight in 46 model books; nothing added. If a bar’s already in your cart, let’s talk about where it fits before the cashier rings it up — the umbrella’s cheaper in the store than in the rain.