7 Best Times to Buy Big-Ticket Items at Costco All Year

Quick answer: Big-ticket Costco prices bottom out around six windows: early January (post-holiday TV and electronics clearance), late February to March (appliance model-year turnover), Memorial Day and Labor Day weekends (major seasonal sales events), early July (furniture and patio clearance), and Black Friday through Cyber Monday (the year's deepest cuts on electronics and appliances). If you buy just before or during these windows — and track the item for 30 days after — you're positioned for the lowest price of the year.

Key takeaways

• Costco's biggest known sales events cluster around Memorial Day, Labor Day, and Black Friday, according to Costco's own seasonal promotional calendars.
• Appliance and TV model-year changeovers typically happen in late winter and early fall, which is when outgoing models get marked down to clear floor space.
• Costco's price adjustment window is 30 days from purchase in the US and Canada, per Costco's published return and price adjustment policy — buying a few weeks before a known sale still lets you claim the drop.
• Furniture and patio sets often see their steepest discounts in early July, once outdoor-season inventory needs to move before fall resets.

1. Early January: TVs and Electronics Clearance

TVs, laptops, and other electronics often see a second price cut in the first two weeks of January, right after the holiday shopping rush ends. Retailers, including Costco, use this window to clear out holiday inventory before new electronics lines start showing up later in the year. If you bought a TV in December for a gift or a Christmas upgrade, this is exactly the kind of drop worth checking for.

This is also one of the clearest cases for using a price adjustment instead of waiting to buy. Costco's policy allows a refund of the difference if a price drops within 30 days of your purchase, so a December 20 purchase is still covered when prices fall in early January. We covered exactly which categories tend to get hit with this kind of post-purchase drop in 10 Items Most Likely to Get a Costco Price Drop Right After You Buy Them.

2. Late February Through March: Appliance Model-Year Turnover

Major appliances — refrigerators, washers, dryers, dishwashers — tend to hit their lowest prices when manufacturers roll out new model years, and that changeover most often lands in late winter. Outgoing models get discounted to clear warehouse floor space for the replacements. The features rarely change much between model years, so you're often paying less for essentially the same machine.

• Check the model number against last year's version before assuming it's "new"
• Ask a warehouse associate if a floor model or open-box unit is available at a deeper discount
• Scan your receipt into a tracking tool so you're covered if the price drops again within 30 days
• Compare the same appliance across a couple of warehouses if you're near more than one, since stock and pricing can differ by location

If you regularly shop more than one Costco location, it's worth reading How to Track Prices at Multiple Costco Warehouses — appliance pricing especially can vary warehouse to warehouse even within the same region.

3. Memorial Day Weekend: Patio Furniture and Grills

Memorial Day is one of Costco's marquee sales events, and outdoor living items — patio sets, grills, umbrellas, outdoor storage — are usually front and center. This is the unofficial kickoff to patio season, so Costco stocks deep and prices aggressively to move summer inventory fast. If you're planning a patio refresh, this weekend is a stronger bet than waiting until mid-summer.

The catch is that popular sets sell out warehouse by warehouse, sometimes within days. If your local Costco is out of the model you want, an online price on Costco.com may still apply, and it's worth checking both before assuming you missed the window entirely.

4. Early July: Furniture and Patio Clearance

Early July is when Costco starts clearing remaining patio and outdoor furniture stock to make floor space for back-to-school and fall resets. This is a genuinely different window than Memorial Day — it's not a promotional sales event, it's inventory clearance, which often means steeper markdowns on whatever's left rather than broad sales across the whole category. If you missed Memorial Day or didn't love that season's selection, early July rewards patience with lower prices on what remains.

The tradeoff is selection. You're choosing from what didn't sell, not the full spring lineup. If you have a specific set in mind, Memorial Day is the safer bet; if you're flexible and want the best price, wait for the July clearance.

Don't skip this: whichever window you buy in, hold onto your receipt and keep watching the price for the full 30 days after. A single missed price drop on a $2,000 appliance or patio set can be worth more than the sale discount you thought you were getting.

5. Labor Day Weekend: TVs, Smartwatches, and Apple Devices

Labor Day weekend is one of Costco's biggest sales events of the year for electronics, with TVs, smartwatches, and Apple products regularly among the deepest early discounts, based on Costco's promotional patterns in recent years. It sits right before the September–October wave of new tech releases, so retailers use it to clear current-generation stock. If you've been holding off on a TV upgrade or a new Apple Watch, this weekend is one of the few times all year electronics get promotional-level pricing rather than just gradual markdowns.

Because this is a high-traffic sales event, prices can also keep sliding in the days right after as Costco adjusts inventory. That's another reason the 30-day adjustment window matters — a Labor Day purchase that drops again in mid-September is still refundable. We built a full Month-by-Month Guide to Costco's Biggest Seasonal Sales if you want the complete year mapped out beyond just this one weekend.

6. Black Friday Through Cyber Monday: The Deepest Cuts of the Year

Black Friday through Cyber Monday typically brings the single lowest prices of the year on TVs, laptops, and major appliances at Costco, consistent with broader US and Canadian retail pricing patterns during this period. This is the one stretch where waiting almost always beats buying early, if the item can wait. Costco tends to release a dedicated holiday savings catalog in the weeks leading up to it, so watching for that catalog is a reliable early signal of what's coming.

Here's the comparison that matters most for planning your year around big purchases:

Buying Window	Best For	Why Prices Drop
Early January	TVs, electronics	Post-holiday inventory clearance
Late Feb–March	Major appliances	New model-year changeover
Memorial Day	Patio furniture, grills	Major seasonal sales event
Early July	Leftover patio/outdoor stock	Clearance before fall reset
Labor Day	TVs, smartwatches, Apple devices	Pre-new-release clearance
Black Friday–Cyber Monday	Electronics, appliances	Year's biggest promotional event

The risk with Black Friday is timing your purchase against the 30-day window on either side. If you buy something in early November hoping for a Black Friday drop, you're usually still covered — but if you buy on Cyber Monday itself, you've likely already caught the year's best price and there's little room left to fall further.

7. The Week Right After Any Major Sale Ends

Prices sometimes dip again in the week immediately following a big promotional event, once Costco recalculates inventory that didn't move during the sale. This is the window most shoppers never think to check, because the assumption is that the sale price was the floor. It isn't always. Warehouses sometimes discount remaining stock further rather than let it sit until the next seasonal reset.

This is exactly the kind of drop that's easy to miss if you're not actively watching. Setting up alerts for specific items — rather than relying on memory or occasional site visits — is the difference between catching this second dip and losing it. If you haven't set this up yet, Set Up Price-Drop Alerts for Costco Items walks through exactly how.

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Knowing the calendar gets you close to the best price. Catching the actual drop — the one that happens three days after you bought your TV, or the second markdown after Labor Day — is what gets the money back in your pocket. That's the part CostRefund handles automatically: scan your receipt, and the app tracks eligible items for the full 30-day adjustment window in the US and Canada, then alerts you the moment a price drops so you can file for the refund before the window closes.

If you've bought big and want to know whether you left money on the table, it's worth reviewing 5 Signs You Just Missed Out on a Costco Price Adjustment — and if timing your next purchase around a sale, keep your receipt scanned and your alerts on either way.

Related articles

• A Month-by-Month Guide to Costco's Biggest Seasonal Sales
• 10 Items Most Likely to Get a Costco Price Drop Right After You Buy Them
• Set Up Price-Drop Alerts for Costco Items