Paulette Probst crunched numbers last week when she shopped for a 60-inch plasma television.

Should she wait until the new fiscal year and save about $10 in sales tax? Or take advantage of an expiring sale?

She bought the TV and then tried to speed up the state’s sales tax decrease of one percentage point.

“I asked then if they could give it to me a day early. They said ‘no,'” the Clayton resident said Saturday, back at Fry’s Home Electronics in Concord for more reduced tax deals. This time she was browsing for a home entertainment system and a stand for her new TV.

On Day Two of California’s new fiscal year, shoppers fanned out across the Bay Area, most of them harvesting the fruits of the fine print in our new state budget.

One of those fruits was the statewide sales tax dropping to 7.25 percent. And while saving a penny on a dollar purchase is not earthshaking, buying a big-ticket item on Saturday instead of the previous Saturday could leave you a nice chunk of change.

Most customers in the market for cars and SUVs in the East Bay had done their homework before walking into an auto dealership Saturday. Many had been anticipating the change for weeks, said Joseph Crow, sales manager at MINI of Concord.

“We had people just wait,” Crow said.

In the South Bay, a gentleman in a periwinkle polo shirt was practically slobbering over his new Aston Martin on Saturday morning at Los Gatos Luxury Cars. Only one problem: He’d actually bought the thing Thursday. At a dealership where the average car goes for $115,000, he could have pocketed about $1,115.

“Don’t say anything to him,” a salesman whispered. “We don’t want to stir up the sales-tax issue.”

A Shetland pony in the last-minute horse-trading over the new budget, the sales-tax decrease was actually the result of lawmakers letting a 2009 tax hike expire. Over the next year, the lower sales tax will mean nearly $5 billion less in tax revenues for the cash-strapped state.

But for Patricia Giron, a Livermore auditor car-shopping for her daughter on Capitol Expressway in San Jose, it could mean an extra $129 in her pocket if she actually plunked down the $12,900 for the 2006 Mazda Tribute she was eyeing Saturday afternoon.

And if she were to buy, where would those pennies from heaven land?

“It would all go to things for my little man,” said Giron, gesturing at her daughter’s 6-week-old son, Drake, resting in a baby carrier on the floor while Mom and Grandma haggled with salesman Rich Kelly at Capitol Kia.

“We’ll take it, even if it’s just $129,” Giron said. “A dollar’s a dollar.”

She was thrilled that Sacramento had let the tax rate drop, even if it means less money in state coffers. “If our legislators can’t spend taxpayers’ money wisely,” Giron said, “then let us have that money, and we’ll spend it.”

Before July 1, California’s sales tax ranged from 8.25 percent to 10.75 percent, once additional regional voter-approved sales taxes were tacked on. Now that range has been whittled down to between 7.25 percent and 9.75 percent. In San Jose, where the new rate is 8.25 percent, salesman Kelly was ecstatic.

“I’m floored,” he said. “I’ve never heard of taxes going down; they always go up. So this morning, I went out and had a big breakfast, a Spanish omelet and English muffin, just to celebrate.”

A couple of lots down on Auto Row, UC Davis student Hien Vien was about to test-drive a new $15,000 Honda Fit. But it wasn’t because the sales tax had gone down, he said. “It was because my old car is a ’93 Honda Accord and it’s falling apart.”

But he’ll enjoy the $150 he saved, right?

“Oh yeah,” Vien said. “I’ll use it to buy food.”

Opinions varied on the impact of the lower tax for consumers buying other high-price items like jewelry. Gary Shepcaro, who’s owned the Yellow Brick Road Jewelers in Los Gatos for 32 years, said he doubted that saving a few bucks on a new necklace would make any difference to the well-heeled shoppers who frequent his place.

“Fifty dollars savings on a $5,000 piece of jewelry won’t make a difference to most customers,” he said, standing on the sidewalk outside his store. “In this business, where a lot of purchases are for gifts, people might actually feel like they’re being cheap if they focus on the 50 bucks they saved.”

But over on Santana Row in San Jose, Casey and Karen Hui, of Newark, would beg to differ. After browsing the display cases inside Tourneau, where one can buy a watch for the same price of a new car, the Huis said the tax savings on a big-ticket item is nothing to sneeze at.

“I could do a lot with the $600 I saved buying a $60,000 item, whether it’s a car or a piece of jewelry,” Casey Hui said. “That’s a month’s worth of groceries.”

Or, as Karen put it, “a lot of fine dining.”

Casey said “saving several hundred dollars on an expensive item may not mean much monetarily, but psychologically, it’s a win for the consumer. It’s that feel-good factor that people love. You’re buying something expensive — but you’re also saving.”

Correspondent Doug Jastrow contributed to this report.