Trevor recently asked “Do you stockpile store gift cards?” and Matt has a good counterpoint on stocking gift cards. After writing my post in March where I discussed the floating cash, in April I have been stock piling gift cards because of the various gift card deals that have recently popped up like all the flash floods occurring across America, with the exception of California. I have mostly done the American Express prepaid gift card route because the cash back received from sites like TopCashBack subsidize my manufactured spending.
Like many of the commentors in Trevor’s post and Matt’s philosophy, I run very lean on merchant gift cards, with the exception to eBay gift cards. When I buy merchant gift cards from the secondary market, I will liquidate as soon as possible. I’m looking at holding it for less than 15 days. If I’m the first link in the gift card supply chain, I will hold on to it longer until I’m ready to use it. Even then, I will not hold too much. That may change after July when I attend #ResellingDO. I’m pretty excited to attend because I want to begin to resell other things besides gift cards, it’s all about evolving as a person and learning new things.
For the deal side, let’s take a look at last week when I was mostly missing in action on 1 big deal. There were 2 offers on eBay in the same day for 20% off everything. I missed the first deal when the good Doctor of Credit posted it. When round 2 came thanks to Matt, I was able to jump on it.
Get on this! Just snagged $300 in BP Gas for $216 and earned 5.60 in eBay bucks https://t.co/CaW7mig7wP
— Matt from Saverocity (@Saverocity) June 15, 2015
I had already maxed out my eBay bucks, but I bought $300 worth of Sears gift cards. I couldn’t check out through Paypal Digital Gifts, so I bought through GiftCard Mall. Even after the shipping it was a money maker for me.
All of the eBay gift card deals and buying discounted eBay gift cards has made gift card churning incredibly easy and profitable. There were a couple of deals that the math weren’t working out, but a discounted eBay gift card solved that problem. I do have to keep in mind the ceiling that eBay and Paypal have imposed on the gift card limits. My friend Noah at Money Metagame can attest to that. Between the eBay gift card limit and Paypal Digital Gifts “security” issue with buying gift cards, eBay can be a bit of a pain sometimes.
American Express gift cards are incredibly handy to have because like the eBay gift card example, the basic math might come out to be $.012/point, but the cash back from American Express gift cards can knock it down to $.01 to $.009 which is in range where I would normally buy.
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