Sign up for Weekday J and get the latest on what's happening in the Jewish Bay Area.

Nearly 500 packed into Afikomen in Berkeley last year to haggle at its version of a shuk, a Mideastern-style bazaar.

It was so successful the store will reprise the concept this month, with one change. Last year's weeklong shuk left employees drained, so this year it will last just one day — Sunday, Dec. 19.

"Hey, I'll make a deal," owner Jerry Derblich said this week. "Plus, listen, you go into a shuk in Israel, the posted price is a jacked-up price. We don't mark things up before we cut them down."

Last year, for example, three women all wanting the same dumbek — a Middle Eastern drum — converged on Derblich at once.

"I would have sold it for $60," he said. "Well, one woman offered me $30, I said $50, we came down to $40. Another woman overheard, and said, 'I'll give you $50.' But I said no, I'd already had something going with the first woman."

The event was a "blast," said Derblich, who opened the store eight years ago with David Cooper and is now sole owner. "We took the merchandise out of the window; musicians sat in there. And when they weren't playing, we blasted the Israeli radio over the Internet."

The staff will wear costumes for the event like they did last year when a male worker dressed like an early kibbutznik and female staffers donned babushkas.

Derblich himself wore tzitzit, a black vest and a velvet kippah. "I looked a little like a Chassid," he said.

Holy Land Kosher Food will sell latkes, falafel and sweets. And, like last year, musicians will entertain customers.

Gerry Tenney and his band will play klezmer. The Baguette Quartet will offer French cabaret music and klezmer. And two musicians from the band Za'atar, John Ehrlich and Ron Elkayam, will perform music of Jews from Arab countries.

Last year's shuk left Derblich with some great stories.

"There were a few who, no matter how good a deal they got, still weren't satisfied," Derblich recalledr. There was the woman who offered $5 for a set of $40 candlesticks.

"She got angry at me," he said in amazement. "What a sourpuss. Half off wasn't good enough."

But a $750 sterling silver havdallah set found a new home for $400. The buyer first had offered $250.

"If something is going for $100 and you offer me $20, I'll say, 'OK, $95.' That's a ridiculous offer. But this is a very unusual kind of sale. Our motto is, 'You can pay retail, but only if you want to.'"

Not that it's always easy.

"I sold a really beautiful sterling silver chanukiah," he recalled. "It was hard to part with because I knew I couldn't get one like it again. The guy I bought it from in Israel had gone out of business."

Originally marked at $750, it sold for $600.

There was another chanukiah– "only slightly damaged" — priced at $180. A buyer with the skills to fix it took it home for $25.

Last year, a number of customers bid on an item they'd long been pining for.

"There was a woman who got a very expensive prayer shawl that she'd been looking at for months," Derblich said. "She wanted it so much I had to give her a real deal. She said, 'I can't believe it! I really wanted this, but I couldn't afford it.' When people walk out so happy, what we lose in money we make up for in good will."

Following Sunday's shuk, a 20 percent-off sale will continue through Friday, Dec. 24. Still, a number of items will remain on a "shuk table," ready for hold-over hagglers.