Buying Gift Cards on Ebay to Shop For Less

[gogirlanime]

This may or may not be common knowledge but I thought my online buddies here at Saving Advice would like to hear this.

If you shop at a particular store often you can often find gift cards on Ebay for those stores and you pay less than the value on the card. Often people get gift cards to stores they don't like and because they can't cash out the card the sometimes sell them on Ebay for less than the value so they can use the profit elsewhere.

For example, a lady may receive a gift card of $100 to Ann Taylor but she doesn't like the clothes there. So she'll sell the gift card for maybe $80 or $90 on Ebay, if you know you are going to buy $100 worth of Ann Taylor clothes (perhaps plan ahead) or you know for sure you will spend the whole thing you just saved $10-$20 on $100 worth of stuff, that is not including sales and coupons so you might save even more.

This is a great way to save for the holidays as well either to use the gift cards to buy gifts or to gift the gift cards.

[disneysteve]

I have both sold and bought gift cards on ebay and I agree. It can be a good deal either way. Most popular gift cards sell for close to face value so you don't save a lot but even saving 2 or 3 or 4 dollars is nice. And to get rid of unwanted gift cards, it is nice to get almost full value for the card. I've even had cards sell for over face value due to people having special ebay deals where they got a discount, so I've sold a $100 card for something like $102 but the buyer got 5% off so it was still a good deal for them.

[AccountantSalary]

What kind of postage and handling do the gift card sellers add on though? They may initially charge less but add so much in additional charges that you end up spending more than it would cost to buy the card at the store.

[disneysteve]

What kind of postage and handling do the gift card sellers add on though? They may initially charge less but add so much in additional charges that you end up spending more than it would cost to buy the card at the store.

Most of the time they offer free shipping so that isn't a factor. I don't charge for shipping when I sell gift cards.

[gogirlanime]

If you buy these gift cards going through Ebates first (usually it's only a 1% savings) then you also save that amount as well.

[wilddeuce]

I don't like ebay gift cards as there are many scams now. I typically get gift cards from cardpool.com, plasticjungle.com, abcgiftcards.com. I got about 15% off the face value on Marshall/TJMax gcs. I also buy lot of Exxon/Mobile/gas cards typically at 2-3% discount. In state of NJ, there are times, some gas station has a lower price if you pay cash. Gift cards are consider cash. So while I already got a discount on gc, I also get more discount at the pump. On top of that, I still earn credit card points when purchasing the gcs.

[MarkFichara]

Thanks for the nice list of those webs for gift cards. Have a good day.

[cwg9409]

I've never even considered this! Thanks for the advice