Selling gift cards for cash or trade
December 18th, 2005 | by mbhunter |‘Tis the season, among other things, to buy — and receive — gifts for people, including gift cards when you’re not quite sure what they want. You, as the giver, might want to buy such cards at a discount. Or, as the receiver, you might want to sell your gift card if you really have no use for it.
The auction site www.ebay.com has auctions for gift cards all the time. I’ve bought some from eBay and had one auction go really bad. Update on that story: We’re getting paid back after the couple filed Chapter 13. Also, eBay has set some rules for gift card selling, such as a $500 maximum value for offered cards and a limit on volume, that are designed to reduce the likelihood of fraud. I might consider buying gift cards from there again but with a lot of caution.
A post on Financial Rounds pointed me to some good articles on buying/selling/swapping second-hand gift cards at the NY Times and MSNBC. Also mentioned are several sites for performing such transactions:
While these sites don’t have the raw volume of cards available for the popular stores that eBay does, some of these sites offer extra services. For example, CardAvenue.com gives fraud protection for cards valued at up to $100.
So, if you’re selling a card, consider the transaction fees for selling the card and the likely number of offers for your card to determine where and when you sell it. If you’re buying a card — either for a loved one or for yourself! — do the math and include shipping and transaction charges to determine your effective discount. Also consider whether or not you can use a rebate credit card like the Chase Cash Plus® Rewards Visa to knock off another buck or two off the already discounted card.
One Response to “Selling gift cards for cash or trade”
By Lisa on Feb 18, 2007 | Reply
I would not recommend Cardavenue as a place to trade. They claim protection but offer none. I among many others have emailed them multiple times and they simply ignore those emails!