"Hidden" vs. "Available"

[sasharecycles]

So now I'm stumped. It used to be that if you marked an item "unavailable" (while editing) it would simply say "sold out" on the website. I did that for an item b/c I wanted it to show but not be available for purchase, and now it's simply gone. I realize I can also do this by adjusting the inventory count, but really what's the point of having "hidden" when marking it "unavailable" is going to hide it anyway? 

[sfeq]

This is my understanding of how it works:

• Visible means that it will show up on the online store.  If you have 0 items in stock it won't let you add anything to the cart.  If you don't keep track of inventory via square it will let you add items to the cart.
• Hidden means that while it won't show up on your online store you can still give someone the link for them to see the item.
• Unavailable means that it won't show up on the online store and there is no link for your customers to see the item as well.

[lgurasich]

If the above definition is true, why are my items showing up on my app?  I will be using my phone for checkout and it would be helpful to have the unavailable items not showing.  It allows me to select and collect money even though we don't have the item.  I created a list of items that we sold last year at a plant sale.  This year we have many of the same plants but many we don't have.  I don't want to remove the items as we may have them for future sales.  So they stay in the database as "unavailable".  When I publish, the visible items only will be seen on the website that is created.  I would prefer they didn't show up on my phone in my item list. Is there some way to do that?