Shopping Guide

"Was $54.98": How to Tell a Real Discount from a Fake One

6 min read · Published August 2026

The Anchor Price Does the Selling

A price tag that says $27.49 tells you almost nothing. The same tag next to a crossed-out "Was $54.98" feels like a solved problem: half off, decision made. Retailers understand this instinct better than shoppers do. Decades of pricing research show that a reference price raises what people are willing to pay even when the reference is arbitrary, and online stores can print any reference they like next to the real number.

That crossed-out figure is called an anchor, and it is the hardest-working piece of text on the product page. The question that protects your wallet is never "how big is the discount?" It is "discount from what?"

Where List Prices Actually Come From

The most common anchor is the list price, or MSRP, which is set by the manufacturer, not the store. Manufacturers routinely set it high on purpose so that every retailer can appear to discount from day one. There are products whose list price has never once been the selling price anywhere, which makes "38% off list" a statement about marketing, not savings.

On marketplaces it gets looser still. Third-party sellers often supply their own reference prices, and a "was" price sometimes reflects a number the item sold at briefly, months ago, or never at meaningful volume. The Federal Trade Commission has had rules against fictitious former prices since the 1960s, and several state attorneys general have sued major retailers over them, but enforcement is thin and the practice is everywhere. Treat every strike-through as a claim, not a fact.

The Pre-Sale Markup

The oldest trick in the event-sale playbook: in the weeks before a big sale, the everyday price quietly drifts up. Then the event arrives, a dramatic percentage appears, and the "sale" price lands right where the item sat all summer. Consumer groups that track prices across Black Friday consistently find that a large share of advertised doorbusters were cheaper, or the same price, at some earlier point in the year.

This is exactly the problem price history solves. If you check a product's chart and the "deal" price matches the line it has hugged for months, you are looking at theater. Our guide on price tracking covers the tools that make this a ten-second check.

Five Checks That Take Under a Minute

Look at the price history first. One glance at a history chart answers the only question that matters: is today's price actually low for this product? If the current price sits at or near the 90-day average, the strike-through is decoration.

Search the exact model number. Copy the model number into a search engine and see what other stores charge today. A real discount is usually a real discount everywhere-or-nowhere; a fake one collapses the moment you see three other retailers selling at the "sale" price as normal.

Be suspicious of theatrical percentages. "70% off" from an unfamiliar brand almost always means the anchor was invented. Established brands rarely discount that deep on current models because they do not have to. Huge round percentages are a marketing costume, and they cluster on exactly the unbranded categories where anchors are cheapest to inflate.

Compare against the category's everyday price. If a no-name blender is "reduced" from $89 to $49 but a well-reviewed brand sells its equivalent every day at $39, the discount is not just fake, it is irrelevant. Anchors work by keeping your eyes inside one listing. Step outside it.

Check the unit price on consumables. For coffee, vitamins, paper goods, and anything sold in counts and sizes, the per-unit price is the only honest number. A "bonus size" at a higher per-ounce cost is a price increase wearing a sale sticker.

When a Big Discount Is Real

Genuine deep discounts exist, and they usually have a reason you can name. A model being replaced by this year's version. Seasonal clearance when the category's demand dies. Open-box and warehouse units sold at a defect-free discount. A coupon stacking on top of a price that was already stable and fair. When you can point to the reason, the discount tends to survive every check above.

When you cannot, assume the anchor is doing the work. That habit, more than any tool, is what separates shoppers who save money from shoppers who collect percentages. It is also the entire reason this site verifies a price has actually dropped before we feature it: a deal that only exists next to an invented number is not a deal.