I’ve written many posts showing how to earn points or cash back when buying bank gift cards (e.g. Visa, Mastercard, or Amex gift cards).  For some examples, see (“5X everywhere!,” “Turn your Amex into Visa and Save $,” and “Almost too good to be true”).  Buying gift cards can be a great way to earn extra points and to meet minimum spend requirements.  The problem is that even though these gift cards are like money, they cannot be deposited into your bank account, and cannot be used to pay your credit card bill.

Below I’ve listed some ideas for how to turn gift cards into cash.  Before using any gift cards online, be sure to register them with your home address.  Some gift cards only allow registration of your zip code.  In those cases, you’ll find that not all online options work.  With one such card, I was successful in using it to pay my State Farm insurance online, but I was unsuccessful in using it at Amazon.com or Walmart.com.

Spending

The best way to deal with bank gift cards is to spend them in daily use.  That way, you get 100% of their value.  Of course, using gift cards this way can be a big headache, but it is a reasonable option.  One good way to spend them is by paying your insurance bill.  I’ve done this successfully multiple times with State Farm.  Some people have also reported success in using $500 debit gift cards to pay taxes.

Amazon Payments

Amazon Payments is a service that allows you to send payments to friends and family members using credit cards.  You’re allowed to pay friends up to $1000 per month.  As long as you have a gift card that lets you register your full name and address, Amazon Payments should work.  Caution: do not send money back and forth between two people with this service.  Amazon Payments will shut you down if they see that pattern.

PayDivvy

This service is just like Amazon Payments but without the $1000 limit and without the “free” feature.  It costs 3.5% to send money using a credit card with this service, so factor that in if you’re thinking of doing this.  To try this out, I sent $193.24 to my wife.  With the 3.5% fee, the charge came to exactly $200.  This was just the right amount to liquidate a $200 Visa I had bought at OfficeMax.

Square

Square is a little device that attaches to your smart phone and allows you to swipe credit cards for payments.  Over night, the money paid by credit card is deposited into your linked bank account, less a 2.75% transaction fee.  In general this would be a great way to turn gift cards into cash, except for one little hitch: Square terms and conditions prohibit using their service for cash advances.  They will notice (and freeze your account) if you run too many gift cards, especially if the gift cards are registered to yourself!  I listed Square here for completeness, but I do not recommend using it for the purpose of cashing out gift cards.

Buying and Selling Stuff

Finding ways to profit from buying and selling can be a real struggle, especially since services like EBay and Amazon Marketplace take a pretty big percentage of each sale.  However, if you do figure out a way to do this profitably (or at least with minimal loss), it can be a good way to turn gift cards into cash.  One example of how I’ve done this successfully is when I found items on clearance at Kohl’s that cost less than the going rate on Amazon.com.  I used every trick in the book to save a lot more (and earn lots of points), and I bought several hundred dollars worth.  I then turned around and shipped the items to Amazon.com to be sold via their Fulfillment by Amazon service.  Amazon did take a big chunk of each sale, but I was still able to make a modest profit.

Buying and Selling Merchant Gift Cards

This can be tricky and fraught with danger, but the possibilities are certainly there for turning gift cards into cash by buying and selling merchant gift cards (e.g. Walmart cards, gas cards, etc.).  I’m in the process of running some experiments along these lines and I hope to report more soon.  In the meantime, take a look at “Gift cards: buy low, sell high, get cash back.”  Probably the easiest option for cashing in gift cards (but not the most profitable) is to buy high value merchant gift cards at face value, and then sell them by first going through a cash back portal.  By going through TopCashBack to an appropriate gift card reseller and selling gift cards from Target, Walmart, or several gas companies, you can get back as much as 96% of your money.  As, I said, it’s not a profitable route, but it’s pretty easy.

Micro Loans

Kiva.org is a micro loaning organization that allows loans to be funded by credit card.  You do not get paid interest on your loans, but you do help real people when loaning money.  Note that it can take many months to get your money back, but about 99% of all loans do get fully repaid.  For more information see “How to maximize points and virtue through Kiva loans”.

Other Ideas?

Please let me know if you have other strategies for cashing in gift cards.  I’ll keep this post updated as new ideas come along.

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Yesterday I published “Gift card churning gone wrong” in which I whined about a couple of misadventures I’ve had recently in buying and selling gift cards.  Well, my friend Natasha at TopCashBack just emailed me with some brighter news:

• TopCashBack has brought back GiftCards.com.  Earn 4% cash back for buying or selling gift cards!
• TopCashBack has added GiftCertificates.com.  Earn 6% cash back for buying gift cards!  Unfortunately, GiftCertificates.com sells cards at face value (that is, they do not sell discounted cards) and they do not appear to sell high value cards such as Walmart, Target, or gas cards.  But still, 6% back is a good start.

The bad news?  PlasticJungle has stopped giving cash back via TopCashBack.  You can still get 2% cash back from ShopAtHome when buying gift cards, but I don’t know if there are any good cash back options for selling gift cards to PlasticJungle.

I’ve written a few posts about how to buy and sell discounted gift cards in order to add spend to your credit cards.  In general, you won’t make much money from doing this, but if you’re trying to meet minimum spend it’s a great idea.  Or so I thought.  Life has not been good for me in gift card buy/sell land lately:

• TopCashBack used to give 4% cash back for selling gift cards to PlasticJungle, but that dropped to 1%.
• A reader tipped me off about a situation in which one could apparently make money by buying and selling Applebee’s gift cards.  I jumped in and bought a bunch of “paper” gift cards at CardPool.  I thought paper was just a strange name for physical plastic cards.  Instead, when they arrived they were electronic gift cards that had been printed out one page each.  I couldn’t sell these to PlasticJungle so I returned the lot (luckily I got all of my money back).
• In another adventure, I found a money making buy/sell opportunity based upon GiftCardGranny.com stated buy/sell prices.  Well, the buy prices were correct, but when I went to sell the cards I discovered that the sell prices were 5% off.  I lost a few bucks on that deal!  The lesson I learned was to use PlasticJungle’s spreadsheet to look up re-sell prices rather than the GiftCardGranny prices.
• That brings us to today where I proudly announced the availability of a buy/sell opportunity that would lose only 2% from each transaction.  For those looking to meet minimum spend requirements, a 2% loss isn’t that bad.  And, once again, I was able to buy gift cards at the expected rate, but when I went to sell them I discovered the prices were wrong again!  This time it was the spreadsheet that was wrong! I contacted PlasticJungle and got this helpful response:

We would like to inform you that we have a gift card pricing engine that determines what we can pay based on factors such as merchant popularity, resale velocity, seasonality and more.

Please access the link https://www.plasticjungle.com/sell-gift-cards, you will be able to check the offers once you entered your card information.

Anyone want a bunch of JC Penney e-gift cards?  Now, on to new ideas…

I just received an email from CardPool telling me:

For the next 48 hours, you can get JCPenney Gift Cards for 25% off!

This is a great deal if you’re interested in buying things from JC Penney.

 Otherwise, If you’re interested in working off a credit card minimum spend, it looks to me that you can buy and sell these for a fixed 2% loss as follows:

UPDATE: CURRENTLY PLASTIC JUNGLE IS ONLY OFFERING 65% PAYMENT DESPITE THEIR SPREADSHEET CLAIMING 70%.  HOLD OFF ON THIS DEAL UNLESS YOU WANT TO USE JC PENNEY GIFT CARDS!

Step 1: TopCashBack

TopCashBack gives 2% back for purchases made at CardPool (up to $1000 in cash back lifetime)

Step 2: Buy at Cardpool

Buy a bunch of discounted JC Penney gift cards.  My apologies if you find them sold out by the time you get there!

Note that I tried to use both a visa and an Amex gift card purchased at Office Depot, but neither worked.  You may have to use a real credit card here.

Step 3: Wait for gift cards to arrive

Electronic gift cards are usually delivered in a few hours.  Expect to wait at least a few days for paper ones.

Step 4: ShopAtHome

ShopAtHome offers 2% cash back on sales to PlasticJungle.  Note that this is 2% of the amount PlasticJungle will pay (70% currently), not 2% of face value.

Step 5: Sell at Plastic Jungle

Currently, Plastic Jungle offers 70% of face value for JC Penney cards.  One nice thing is that they have an option to sell the gift cards electronically (for select cards, including JC Penney) so that you don’t have to mail anything.  You can check Plastic Jungle’s current rates here. 

GiftCardGranny.com, if you’re reading this, note that your current listed sell price is incorrect.

Add it up

If I did my math correctly, the total loss from this whole procedure is 2%.  If you use a credit card that awards points worth 2% or more (SPG, for example), then you come out even or slightly ahead.  If you’re working on meeting minimum spend requirements on a credit card, this could be a good opportunity.

Just two days ago I was approved for the Ink Bold credit card.  I already have an old Ink Bold (which I refer to as an Ink Old), but I’ll get another signup bonus from the new one because the new one is a different product.  The new Ink Bold offers 5 points per dollar for office supplies, phone services, and cable bills and 2 points per dollar for gas and hotels.  The Ink Old, on the other hand, offered only 1 point per dollar base (with some options to increase the payout a little bit).

The current offer for the Ink Bold, if you signup via a referral link (see Preparing for Miles), is 50K points after $5K of spend in 3 months.  Unfortunately, it looks like this deal will go away soon (my guess is end of month) to be replaced with a $10K spend requirement.  See Gary’s View from the Wing post for more information.

The +27K bonus plan

I love that the Ink Bold offers 50K Ultimate Rewards points as a signup bonus.  To me, Ultimate Rewards points are among the most valuable points available, so 50K is awesome.  However, I’m greedy and will happily do what it takes to earn even more!  The trick is to spend the required $5K in ways that will earn as many points as possible.  Here’s my plan:

Office Depot via Ultimate Rewards Mall: $100 = 1,500 points

Currently, Office Depot is offering 10 points per dollar for purchases made via the Ultimate Rewards Mall if you sign in with your Ink card.  By going through the mall and making purchases that I need anyway, I’ll earn 10X from the mall and 5X from the Ink Bold’s office supply category bonus.

Staples Free After Rebate Downloads: $3000 = 21,000 points

Almost every week, a new deal is available in which you can buy “free after rebate” software from Staples.  By going through the Ultimate Rewards Mall you can earn 2X bonus points, plus you’ll get 5X from the Ink’s office supply category bonus.  Staples has been averaging about $1000 per month in available FAR deals so I hope to do $3000 worth in 3 months. 

Note that some people see Staples at 3X in the Ultimate Rewards Mall so they will earn even more points!

Office Depot $500 Visa cards: $2000 = 10,000 points

As I posted a couple of days ago, it is possible, in person, to buy $500 Visa gift cards at Office Depot with only a $4.95 service fee.  Purchases made at Office Depot count as office supply purchases, so these Visa cards will net 5X points!  I’ll buy at least two of these and use them for non category purchases such as groceries and department stores.

Add it up

The plan shown above will return over 32,000 points with only about $5,000 spend.  If all $5000 went instead to 1X purchases, you would gain only 5,000 points above the sign-up bonus, so this plan gives you an extra 27,000 points!  In reality, of course, you would probably have a mix of 1X, 2X, and 5X purchases without this plan, so 27K extra is a bit of an exaggeration, but it sounds better than saying “between 0 and 27K extra”…

Note that the amounts shown are approximations of what will be spent.  The Staples deals, in particular, will depend on what is available at the time.

Caution

As I wrote about a few days ago, Chase may cancel your accounts if they suspect you of abusing your card’s benefits.  That being said, unless you have a very low credit limit, I do not think that spending $5K in 3 months on office supplies will raise any eyebrows.  If you spend $10K per month all on office supplies, however, you may be at risk.  No one but Chase (I suppose) knows the magic amount that is safe, so use your own judgment here.

If you do not have a Chase Ink card, you can read more about those and other cards on the Preparing for Miles page which can be found as a menu item at the top of every page on the Frequent Miler blog.

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I’ve reported before that it is possible to increase credit card spend by buying and selling discount gift cards.  You can see more in the post “Gift cards: buy low, sell high, get cash back.”  To make many of these deals work, you need to get extra cash back when buying and selling gift cards.  One of the best options has been to go through TopCashBack to PlasticJungle.  Currently, TopCashBack gives 2% back for gift cards bought at PlasticJungle and 4% back for gift cards sold to PlasticJungle.  Another good option is ShopAtHome which offers a flat 2% cash back rate.  These cash back options often go a long way in bridging the difference between buy and sell prices, so that you can come out even and sometimes ahead by doing this.

Now for the bad news.  I received a tip today from a person who wishes to remain anonymous: As of midnight April 12th (Thursday night) PlasticJungle will lower their payout to cash back sites to 1% across the board.  It will be interesting to see if TopCashBack and ShopAtHome instantly lower their rates as well.  I expect they will.

So, if you have gift cards to sell, you might want to hurry!

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Recently reader John W tipped me off about a new cash back site named TopCashBack.  He had found that TopCashBack offered the best cash back rates for buying and selling gift cards through sites like PlasticJungle and Cardpool.  TopCashBack’s rates were so much better than the other cash back sites that I had to redo my entire “cheat sheet” showing how to buy and sell gift cards (you can find the cheat sheet here, or under the “Resources” tab on my site). 

How do they do it?

TopCashBack has affiliate relationships with merchants (through affiliate networks) and so they are paid whenever someone makes a purchase after clicking through their site.  Where they are different from other cash back sites (much different!) is that they give 100% of that money back to the consumer!

Impossible, right?  I mean, they need to somehow cover their employee salaries, office space, and hosting costs.  Right?  I checked a couple of merchants who make their affiliate percentages public and found it to be true:  In those cases, the amount the merchant pays their affiliates is the same rate given by TopCashBack.  So, how do they do it?

“My prices are so cheap, I’m losing money on every deal, but I’ll make it up in volume”

-Car salesman Madman Muntz’s advertising pitch

Yes, they make it up in volume.  Really.  On Monday, I had a great chat with TopCashBack’s Natasha-Rachel Smith.  Natasha is the head of communications and public relations for TopCashBack overall, and (as if that wasn’t enough) she is the head-honcho in charge of TopCashBack’s US site.  You see, TopCashBack.co.uk started in the UK and has become quite popular there.  Only recently (about 6 months ago) have they ventured across the sea to try to take over the colonies.

What I learned from Natasha is that TopCashBack earns money almost entirely from ads on its site.  Each ad is accompanied by a disclaimer saying “Sponsored advert – Zero cashback.”  After several years of losing money with this approach in the UK, they are now the top cash back site in the UK.  They now get enough traffic on their site to make their revenue model work.  Their hope and intent is to do the same in the US.

Testing the Service

I haven’t used TopCashBack long enough to actually deposit money in my bank account, but I do have over $60 pending. I have about $16 from buying gift cards at Cardpool, $14 from selling gift cards to Plastic Jungle, and $30 from “tell a friend” referrals. I also have 15 cents pending because I clicked through to a site called HotelsCombined and I searched for a hotel. I didn’t make a reservation or buy anything, I just searched.

Impressively, most of my pending transactions appeared the next day after I clicked through TopCashBack. Last night I made purchases at Staples.com and Drugstore.com. Those haven’t shown up yet, but hopefully they will soon. The Drugstore.com purchase was made using gift card credit I had left over from previous experiments. In those experiments I found that portals did not give cash back or points for such purchases. It will be interesting to see if the same happens here.

I’m Selling Out

TopCashBack isn’t paying me in any direct way to write this post, but they are paying me:  Just like anyone else who signs up for TopCashBack, I get money back when I shop and I get $5 each time I successfully refer a friend.  And, I now know the boss:  I asked Natasha if she could add Staples to the site, and the very next day it appeared!  Even better, after reading comments on prior Frequent Miler posts, she proactively began an effort to find out which merchants give cash back for gift card purchases!  As that information trickles in, the site will be updated to make payout amounts more clear.  This has huge implications for future gift card churning schemes!  So, yeah, I’m selling out.  TopCashBack has provided a path to help my readers save more money, and a way to make Frequent Miler schemes more lucrative.  So, yes, I’m happy to help them in return by crowing about their service.

So, what do you think?  Am I right to “sell out” here?  Do you think that it’s in our best interest to help TopCashBack succeed in the US?  If you’ve used TopCashBack, how has the experience been?

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I’ve reported in the past that those with Chase Ink cards (the ones that give 5 points per dollar for office supplies) can profit from buying Visa gift cards at office supply stores.  There are two general approaches to doing this, one is online and the other in-store.  Which is better?

Option 1: Buy Visa gift cards at Staples via Ultimate Rewards Mall

As I reported in the post “Inking Money” you can buy $100 Visa gift cards (with a $5.95 service fee) at Staples via the Ultimate Rewards Mall in order to get a total of 9 points per dollar.  The extra points earned when doing this (above the 1 point normally earned for credit card spend) are worth $11.18 according to the Fair Trading Price of Ultimate Rewards points.  After subtracting out the $5.95 service fee, you gain $5.23 (in the form of points).  In other words, this is like a 5.23% rebate!

Option 2: Buy Visa gift cards in person

Another option with the Ink card is to buy $200 Visa gift cards with a $6.95 service fee at any office superstore such as Staples, OfficeMax, or Office Depot.  Since the Ink Bold gives 5 points per dollar for office supplies, this approach returns 1035 points, or 935 more than would be earned for non-bonus purchases.  The Fair Trading Price of those 935 points is $12.24.  After subtracting out the $6.95 service fee, you gain $5.29 (in points).  This amounts to a 2.6% rebate.

So, which approach is better?  Option 1 gives you a much better rate of return.  On the other hand, the maximum size Visa card you can get with this approach is $100.  With the in-store approach you can get cards worth $200.  Either way, if you can use Visa gift cards effectively, this is a great way to maximize your points earnings!

If you do not have a Chase Ink card, you can read more about those and other cards on the Preparing for Miles page which can be found as a menu item at the top of every page on the Frequent Miler blog.

Buying and selling discount gift cards is a good option if you are looking to increase credit card spending in order to qualify for sign-up bonuses, gain bonus miles or elite status from high spend, or simply to earn credit card rewards (cash back, miles, points, etc.).  In the post “Top 20 best value gift cards” I showed that it is sometimes possible to buy gift cards for the same price or less than you can sell them.  A big advantage of merchant gift cards for buying and selling is that they are usually sold with no shipping or handling costs and with no sales tax.  By wisely buying and selling gift cards it is possible to drive up spending on your credit cards and get most, if not all, of your money back for paying off the bills.

My first stop is always GiftCardGranny.com which maintains up to date buy and sell prices for a number of gift card resellers.  Through careful scouting of this site, it is possible to find cards that you can sell for about the same price as you will buy.

Below are my experiences with buying and selling discount gift cards from several online gift card resellers:

PlasticJungle

PlasticJungle is probably the best known gift card re-seller.  I haven’t yet bought any cards from PlasticJungle, but I did sell one without any problem.  They provided a shipping label which I printed and affixed to a regular letter sized envelope.  I mailed the gift card and received a check in about a week.  If you’re thinking of buying from them, consider going through FatWallet to get an extra 1% cash back from your transaction.  Also note that, while I had no problems, a few readers have complained in the past about issues dealing with PlasticJungle.  There is a reasonable chance that these issues were due to growing pains.  Hopefully they have things running smoothly now.

CardPool.com

Through CardPool.com I ordered a $99.00 Home Depot electronic gift card for $89.89 (9.2% off face value).  After they called me to check my identity, I received the gift card via email.  They told me that the phone call was only needed for my first order.  Overall, the process was simple, fast, and painless.

I also sold a gift card to CardPool.  Like PlasticJungle, CardPool paid for postage and I received a check promptly.  In both cases (buying and selling), I first went through the ShopAtHome cash-back portal.  ShopAtHome offers .8% cash back when you buy gift cards from CardPool.com and 1.6% cash back when you sell gift cards to CardPool.com.  In both cases, cash back appeared as pending within a few days.  The amazing thing was that the cash back percentages turned out to be percentages of the gift card’s face value, not the transaction amount!

GiftCards.com

One of the neat things about GiftCards.com is that if your gift card has a PIN, you can sell them the gift card electronically by entering the gift card # and PIN into their website.  There is no need to mail anything!  The best part is that GiftCards.com doesn’t lower the sale price when you sell to them electronically as some other resellers do.  So, in the same day that I bought a Home Depot e-gift card from CardPool.com, I was able to sell it to GiftCards.com!  By going through the cash back portal, MyDealsAndCoupons, I was able to get 3.2% cash back on the sale of the gift card!  Just like with ShopAtHome, the cash back was a percentage of the gift card’s face value, not the transaction amount.  Much like PlasticJungle and CardPool.com, with GiftCards.com I received a check in about a week.

EBay

Buying and selling gift cards on EBay is very different than with the companies listed above.  When selling on EBay, you need to factor in EBay’s pretty hefty seller fees (EBay + Paypal fees come to about 11.75%) and you do need to pay for shipping or pass along that cost to the purchaser.  I sold one gift card on EBay and it went OK.  I managed to get a bit more for the card than I would have through a gift card reseller, but it was definitely quite a bit more hassle. 

I’ve also bought a few gift cards on EBay.  There are several advantages to buying gift cards on EBay over other gift card resellers: 1) You can pay with an EBay gift card and it is often possible to get points or cash back for purchasing EBay gift cards; 2) You can sometimes get better discounts than from other resellers; 3) You get 2% back in the form of EBay bucks; and 4) You can use EBay bucks to pay for gift cards.  On the other hand, there are serious downsides: 1) You never know if the seller is honest (see Washing Walmart); and 2) It can take a very long time for gift cards to be shipped and delivered. 

So far I’ve been lucky, and my EBay experiences have been fine.  I’ll continue to buy gift cards on EBay because of the significant benefits, but I’ll stay away from selling due to the extra hassle. 

Please share

Do you have gift card buying or selling experience? What has worked well for you and where have things gone wrong?  Please share your experiences in the comments below.

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UPDATE: Once you factor in shipping charges, the real cost per point is 1.1 cents.  See comments section for details.

Barnes & Noble is currently running a promotion in The Ultimate Rewards Mall in which they’ll give 10 points per dollar for purchases (including gift cards).  At the same time, the American Express OPEN Savings program (which comes with American Express business cards) gives 5% back for Barnes & Noble purchases.  If you have an Amex OPEN card and a Chase Sapphire Preferred card, you can combine these deals to get a fantastic rebate from shopping at Barnes & Noble.  If your goal, though, is not to buy books or Nooks, then consider the following approach to buy Ultimate Rewards points (and a few Amex points):

1. Buy a Barnes & Noble gift card:

• Log into the Ultimate Rewards Mall and click through to Barnes & Noble
• Add a physical gift card (not an e-card) to your shopping cart.
• Check out and pay with your American Express business card (make sure it has OPEN Savings).

2. Once you get the gift card, sell it:

• Log into ShopAtHome and click through to Cardpool.com (ShopAtHome will give you 1.6% cash back)
• Sell your Barnes & Noble gift card to Cardpool.com for 81% of its value

3. Add it up:

Here is how the math works out with the purchase and sale of a $100 gift card:

• Total expenses: $100
• Total rebates: $87.60
• OPEN rebate: $5
• ShopAtHome rebate: $1.60
• CardPool payment: $81
• Total cost: $100 – $87.60 = $12.40
• Total points earned: 1170
• Ultimate Rewards: $100 X 10 = 1000 + 7% annual dividend = 1070
• American Express points = 100

Total cost per point = $12.40 / 1170 = 1.05 cents per point.

Notes

• ShopAtHome will not send you a rebate check until you have earned $25.  If you calculate the costs without the ShopAtHome rebate, the cost rises to 1.2 cents per point (which still isn’t bad!)
• The type of points earned from American Express depends on which card is used for purchasing the gift card.  For example, you might earn SPG points, Membership Rewards points, Delta Skymiles, etc.  If you use a card that gives more than 1 point per dollar (such as the Hilton Surpass), then you will obviously earn more points with this approach.

Win a Nook!

Reminder: Until Feb 14th, you can win a Barnes & Noble Nook Color simply by adding a comment to our ever growing story. Visit this page to participate!

A new option for meeting minimum credit card spend! 

On Friday, I reported that one can save money almost anywhere by buying discounted gift cards prior to making purchases.  In that post I mentioned that the folks at GiftCardGranny.com had supplied me data for a future post.  Well, this is that post…

I asked GiftCardGranny.com to use their database to find the gift cards that retain their value the best.  These are the cards with the smallest difference between the best discount purchase price and the best resale price.  For example, if one could buy JC Penney gift cards for 80% of their value and then resell them for 77% of their value, that would be attractive because the buyer only risks losing 3% if they find they’re unable to use the gift cards.

The Data

GiftCardGranny.com aggregates gift card buy and sell prices from ABC Gift Cards, Cardpool, GiftCards.com, PlasticJungle, CouponTrade, GiftCardBin, and eBay.  For my request, GiftCardGranny.com poured over 6 months of data to find the cards with the smallest difference between the average discounted purchase price and the maximum sell price.  eBay data includes both “Buy It Now” and auction prices, but GiftCardGranny.com trims the outliers from the auction prices in order to prevent the auctions from unduly skewing the results.  I further filtered the results to remove merchants with fewer than 20 gift cards represented in the dataset.

The Results

Incredibly, we discovered that the average discounted purchase price in some cases was lower than the best available resale price.  In other words, it is sometimes possible to make money by buying and selling discount gift cards!  For example, at the time of my writing this, there are a few Boston Market gift cards available for 30% off their face value.  At the same time, GiftCards.com is offering 72% of face value to buy Boston Market gift cards from you.  So, you can actually make 2% profit by buying and selling these cards. 

So, without further ado, here is the top 20 best value gift cards:

1. 24 Hour Fitness
2. BoJangles’
3. Dave and Busters
4. Frontier Airlines
5. Fuddruckers
6. Pei Wei
7. Speedway Motors
8. PGA Superstore
9. Piperlime
10. Boston Market
11. Athleta
12. Abercrombie & Fitch
13. TGI Friday’s
14. Albertsons
15. Dell
16. Cabela’s
17. Gulf Oil
18. Exxon
19. Walmart
20. Target

Note that not all of these gift cards are always available at a good price (or at all).  You can use GiftCardGranny.com to find the current best discount purchase price and the current best resale price for these cards.  If the card you want is not available, sign up for email alerts to be notified when it is.

Why Bother?

Obviously, if you shop at any of these merchants, it may be worthwhile to keep an eye out for these discounted gift cards.  Another option is to try to make some money by buying and selling gift cards, but really you’re not going to get rich doing this.  The real value, in my opinion, is for those of you struggling to meet minimum credit card spend in order to qualify for big signup bonuses.  If you spend a couple of hours each week looking for cards that you can buy and sell for little or no loss, you may be able to meet minimum spend requirements without stretching your budget.  Please note, though, that there are risks involved: individual buyers and sellers may try to swindle you; cards can get lost in the mail; clerical errors could mean that you do not get your gift cards or get paid properly; etc.

Extra Cash

In some cases, when buying and selling gift cards, it is possible to get 1% to 3.5% cash back in the process!  Here are some of the best deals I’ve found.  Please let me know if you come across others:

• Through ShopAtHome, the following offers are available:
• CardPool.com offers .8% cash back for buying gift cards, and 1.6% cash back for selling gift cards!
• GiftCertificates.com offers 3% cash back for buying merchant gift cards.
• GiftCards.com offers 3.5% cash back for buying merchant gift cards.
• Through FatWallet, you can get 1% cash back for purchases made at PlasticJungle
• Through eBay, you always get 2% back in the form of eBay bucks.

Note: If you would like to signup for ShopAtHome, please consider using this signup link.  You and I will both receive $5 towards our accounts.  When asked for the email address for the friend who referred you, enter:

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