"A bargain is something you don't need at a…

“A bargain is usually something you can’t use at a price you can’t resist” (or, in a later form, “A bargain is something you don’t need at a price you can’t resist”) is often attributed to humorist Franklin P. Jones (1908-1980). Jones possibly wrote this in The Saturday Evening Post in 1949. The saying was printed in many newspapers in the 1950s and 1960s.

Squidoo
Franklin P. Jones (1908 - 1980) was a Philadelphia reporter, public relations executive and humorist. He wrote quips and quotes that entertained readers of major publications for years.

He was known nationally during the 1940s and 50s for his column “Put it this Way” in the Saturday Evening Post. “Put it this Way” set a record as the longest continuously published feature in the Saturday Evening Post.

He was an accomplished “paragrapher” - a writer who condenses humorous or thought provoking ideas into paragraph form. His quips and quotes were published (often anonymously) in numerous publications, including Reader’s Digest, the Wall Street Journal, Changing Times and Quote magazine.

Google Books
The Dictionary of Modern Proverbs
Edited by Charles Clay Doyle, Wolfgang Mieder and Fred R. Shapiro
New Haven, CT: Yale University Press
2012
Pg. 13:
A bargain is something you don’t need at a price you can’t resist.
1964 Christian Science Monitor 10 Feb.: “Do you know the cynic’s definition of a bargain? “Something you can’t use—at a price you can’t resist.’” There exist other proverbial warnings about “bargains,” some of them older than the twentieth century: “A bargain is usually worth no more than you pay for it”; “A bargain usually costs more in the end”; “On a good bargain think twice.”

Google Books
The Saturday Evening Post
Volume 222
1949
Pg. 129:
A bargain is usually something you can’t use at a price you can’t resist.

2 December 1952, Lubbock (TX) Evening Journal, “The Plainsman,” sec. 3, pg. 1, col. 1:
That Girl on Broadway says a bargain is usually something you can’t use offered at a price you can’t resist.

9 October 1955, Springfield (MA) Sunday Republican, “Some Definitions” (from the Glasgow Evening Times), pg. 15C, col. 5:
Bargain—something you can’t use at a price you can’t resist.

25 July 1962, Chicago (IL) Tribune, pg. A1:
A bargain is something you can’t use at a price you can’t resist.

Google Books
Your Complete Guide to Money Happiness
By Henry S. Brock
Carson City, NV: Legacy Pub. Co.
1997
Pg. 74:
As Franklin P. Jones once quipped, “A bargain is something you can’t use at a price you can’t resist.”

Google Books
How to Be Richer, Smarter, and Better-Looking Than Your Parents
By Zac Bissonnette
New York, NY: Portfolio (Penguin Books)
2012
Pg. ?:
A bargain is something you can’t use at a price you can’t resist. —FRANKLIN P. JONES