As usual I had left the present buying thing to my wife- who's never trusted me to get the right prezzie for the right person and she's probably right.

That year though, one of our daughters had hinted for some time (she'd just started at university) that a particular laptop would help with her studies.

My wife had tried everywhere to get this bit of fancy 'must have' technology, with no luck at all, so I said I'd see what I could do.

I tried every computer store in town, made dozen's of phone calls to friends, asked people in the street for advise and must have walked ten miles trying to run down this gizzmo - nothing, absolutely no joy at all.

This particular piece of Packard Bell must have been incredibly hot to be sold out from every store a couple of weeks before the holiday. Only hens teeth were rarer!

Anyway, that's how I found myself propping up Madigans Bar that afternoon at four o'clock.

I was tired , my feet had blisters and I couldn't think where I could try next. That's when my old friend Tim Cassidy walked in and told me I looked wasted and asked what the problem was. So I told him about all the grief I was having trying to locate the missing link.

"No problem my man, how soon do you need it?" "Er, like yesterday" I said.

He said he couldn't do yesterday but how about forty eight hours? I told him I didn't believe him but he just smiled and said "we'll see, you make sure you're here this time on Thursday, and by the way, bring some cash!"

Now, I hadn't seen Tim for maybe two or three years and back then he was a blue collar factory worker. Judging by the way he was dressed things were obviously going well for him and he told me he was now into "buying and selling things"....whatever that meant!

Thursday came and Tim was there before me waiting with beers on the table and a package on the floor under it.

I couldn't believe my eyes, it really was the laptop nobody had left and in the manufacturer's shrunk-wrapped carton!

Oh, this was just great but when he told me how much he wanted for it I was staggered. Just one third the retail price!

Lots of things flashed through my mind - it's stolen goods, cheap foreign rip-off copy, all sorts of things.

Tim knew what I was thinking and assured me that it was the "Real McCoy."

"Ok Tim, how did you do it?" And what he told me is when my shopping education began.

He told me about warehouses full of bankrupt stock, government auctions, police auctions and customs auctions where you can buy just about anything you want at a fraction of the retail price in shops. Brand names and literally anything you can imagine. All legal!

He told me about a warehouse, not two miles away, that specialized in selling returned catalogue items, electrical and electronic goods at unbelievable prices - all brand spanking new!

He told me about a repossessed property auction coming up shortly that was sure to earn him a lot of money - this auction (like most of them, funnily enough) would not be advertised to the general public.

When I asked Tim why I hadn't heard about these type of opportunities before his answer surprised me. He told me that it wasn't necessary for the auction houses, warehouses and factories to spend money on advertising these goodies because all the "dealers" already knew when and where they were held.

He also said it was the "dealers" who really mattered because they were the ones who bought products in bulk and in "job lots," but there wasn't anything to stop the general public walking into these places and buying at genuine wholesale (or less!) prices.

It's been a couple of years now since that conversation with Tim and, thanks to him, I honestly can't say how much money that pub chat has saved me.

What it really comes down to is knowledge. If you don't know about how these huge savings can be made and where to take advantage of them, how can you do anything about it?

There are, on the Internet, many hundreds of articles built around that magical word "wholesale". Most seem to be dedicated to trying to sell you some cheap Chinese widget.

Do yourself (and your family) a favor and find out all you can about cheap, wholesale bargain shopping. There is some very good wholesale buying information available but be very selective in what you believe.