Home Depot clearance tags can tell you a lot, but only if you know what to look at. A lot of older advice about secret codes in the price endings doesn’t hold up anymore. Here’s what actually matters.
Real clearance tags have two marks
A real Home Depot clearance tag shows:
- A date, which tells you when that clearance price started
- A “WAS” price, the price before the markdown
Older tags don’t even say “Clearance” on them. The date in the corner is what gives them away. Newer tags print the word “CLEARANCE” right on the tag. Both versions carry the date and the WAS price.
Yellow doesn’t always mean clearance
This trips people up. Home Depot also prints regular promotional labels on yellow paper. And when a store runs out of white label stock, normal labels can print on yellow too. If a yellow label has no date and no WAS price, it isn’t clearance.
The reverse happens as well. Clearance tags sometimes print on plain white paper when yellow runs out. If a white tag says CLEARANCE and shows a WAS price, treat it like clearance.
The price-ending myth
For years, penny guides said the last two digits of a clearance price worked like a calendar. A price ending in .06 meant one stage, .03 meant a later one, and so on. According to PennyCentral, that ladder no longer works in 2026. The same ending can mean different things at different stores, on different items and in different weeks.
What to trust instead
PennyCentral suggests reading the marks in this order:
- The date on the tag
- The WAS price, and how big the gap is
- The aisle and bay location
- The price ending, last
An older date plus a big drop from the WAS price means the item has been in clearance a while. That makes it a better candidate to check.
A $0.01 tag vs a price ending in .01
Keep these separate. A tag reading $0.01 total is a penny. A price like $61.01 is just a later-stage markdown. It might head toward a penny, or it might not.
A tag is a clue, not proof
Even a perfect-looking tag doesn’t tell you today’s register price. Prices change, and tags get stale. The only proof is scanning the barcode on the package. Here’s how to do that without triggering an alert.
Quick version
Look for the date and the WAS price. Ignore the old price-ending codes. Use the tag to decide what to scan, then let the register tell you the truth. If you’re new to all this, start with our beginner’s guide to Home Depot penny items.