Converting Amazon Giftcards into Stock?

[james.hendrickson]

So every week or so, my wife gets a 5 dollar Amazon giftcard from her bing rewards (she uses bing for her internet searches and as a result gets occasional credits that she takes in the form of an amazon giftcard).

My question is this: how do I turn those Amazon giftcards into stock?

Has anyone done this successfully?

[Gailete]

I don't know but would be happy to learn.

I also want to know about how to get those gift cards off of Bing.

[amarowsky]

I guess the most simplified approach, would be to turn the Gift card into cash, then buy stocks with cash.

Cardpool.com or giftcardgranny.com both broker the buy/sell of giftcards.

This does account for a little extra work, and because Amazon stock is over 1k, you'll need ~200 GC's to be able to purchase.

Sorry the idea isn't more clever. But it is feasible.

[disneysteve]

Use the gift cards to buy things on Amazon that you would normally pay for otherwise. Use the money saved in that process to buy the stock.

Don't go with cardpool because you only get a fraction of face value.

[james.hendrickson]

Okay, so here is one model that would work, but its inefficient.

1) Search a ton using Bing rewards - get Amazon giftcards.

2) Redeem the Amazon giftcards for stockpile stock cards (sold via Amazon per image below)



3) Redeem the Stockpile giftcards for stock inside a Stockpile account.

This works. It converts Amazon rewards to stock.

The only downside is cost. Stockpile charges $4.49 in shipping, plus a commission for redeeming the stock inside their account ($1.00).

So, if the value of the giftcard is worth $25, and you need to pay shipping and commission ($5.50), then thats 22% in transaction fees. This is a relatively high cost at the lowest transaction level.

Two better questions are 1. Is a way to scale this? For example, could you ever get $10,000 worth of stock this way? 2. Is it worth the time involved? Maybe the whole process takes an hour - could there be a better use of that hour that might get you more money?

[bjl584]

Just open up an account with Fidelity and buy stock that way.

Enjoy the Amazon gift cards for things on Amazon.

Making money doesn't need to be complicated.

[Gailete]

I'd go with what Steve says, use the cards to buy what you need and take the cash to invest in Amazon stock or any stock through any of your usual routes.

[scfr]

James - Why do you want to turn the rewards cards in to stock? Is it because you would like to get something for free that doesn't get used up and disappear but instead potentially appreciates in value?

I agree with the others that using the Amazon gift cards for a conventional purchase (and then turning the $5 savings in to a stock purchase) would be easiest, but you may have a reason for wanting to turn the Amazon GCs more directly in to stock.

I suppose you could hang on to the gift cards in hopes that Amazon starts a stock trading platform in the near future. Given their moves in to household and financial services, it's not too terribly farfetched to start thinking that they'll move on to consumer financial services some day is it? Of course, that would mean taking a chance on something that might never happen while sitting on gift cards that are losing value due to inflation ...

[disneysteve]

James - Why do you want to turn the rewards cards in to stock?

I was wondering that too.

Always remember that money is fungible. A $5 gift card is the same as a $5 bill in your pocket (assuming the gift card is to a place you can use it). So if you have $50 worth of Amazon cards, you can use them to buy $50 worth of household items that you would normally buy at your local store. That leaves you with an extra $50 in your pocket that you can then use to invest in stocks.

[Gailete]

I like that bit about getting gift cards for places you could use it. This isn't part of the discussion, but any day of the week give me gift cards to Amazon, B&N, Joanns Fabric, WM, etc. But one Christmas my brother gave me a gift card for Starbucks. I don't drink coffee and my nearest Starbucks is 20+ miles away. So the next Christmas he gives me a another one and so I say, you know I don't drink coffee don't you and he says sure, but there are desserts and things you can buy. Okay maybe a bit of sense to that. But still why do people give gift certificates to places the people don't go or use? My DIL drinks coffee so she got the cards.

[msomnipotent]

You could also saving up the Amazon gift cards to buy a lot at once and only pay the $4.49 shipping fee once. I added 5 cards to my cart just to verify that there is 1 shipping fee. I would assume that you could combine all the gift cards into one stock purchase, but even if you couldn't, 99 cents is a pretty cheap commission.

I just noticed that they are charging $29.95 for the $25 in shares, so they are really charging the $4.95 commission right off the bat. Are they also charging an additional 99 cents once you open an account? Even so, that is still a reasonable commission price. You would be paying that much or more unless you had an introductory offer for free trading somewhere else, and you would be getting the shares for free from Bing anyway so it is still free shares.

[Gailete]

I noticed something interesting at the grocery store yesterday. They have a machine that will take a gift card and issue you cash for a fee. The fee of course not shown anywhere on the machine. If the fee is reasonable, sounds like a good way to get rid of unwanted gift cards.

[Budget Kitty]

I think Steve already mentioned the perfect method above. Just use the Amazon gift cards to buy things you need (Amazon has pretty much everything) and use the cash you saved to buy stocks.