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That said, the question I’m trying to answer for myself (and would love to hear your input too), is: do you jump on a gift card deal, in the anticipation of a deal that the gift card will enable you to be profitable on?
For example, Frequent Miler’s QuickDeal for $150 in eBay Gift Cards for $135, here’s a great way to get gift cards at lower than face value. The result is that you can use that to buy product to resell, thereby reducing your total outlay for that product beyond any promotion a store may offer, or miles/points/cashback from a shopping portal.
But then how far is too far? Do you stockpile gift cards? What happens if you get shutdown like our friend Vinh at Miles per Day?
How I go about things at the moment
I am far from a good example when it comes to *truly* stacking deals. Some folks go through many steps to stack deals. I unfortunately don’t have time for that, so the most I’ll do is buy gift cards from Staples, Sears, or off of eBay — but generally only if I see a prospect. I’m very cautious about speculatively buying gift cards.
I’m with you – I don’t typically stockpile them but I do occasionally – I have a couple of hundred dollars in Sears gift cards right now, that I bought at a big portal multiplier – just waiting for a good deal to unload them.
So what’s a big enough portal multiplier for you to buy Sears GCs? 10x? more?
I used to, but I got a little overzealous earlier this year and have pulled back. I’ve been stuck with a few hundred in Sears GCs for a few months now and that has made me rethink things. I even resold the “$100 Sears GCs for $85” discount deal a couple of weeks ago because I didn’t like having that much money tied up, waiting for a deal that might never happen. With Kohl’s, you know when the 30% coupons and $10 off $XX coupons are coming out, so I wait until a good portal bonus or the day before the sale to order them. But eBay and Staples? They’re a no-brainer! I’ve never had those gather cyber-dust for more than a week, so the stockpile is short-lived.
I totally see the problem of having too much money tied up. I tend to do a similar strategy with Kohls.
Define stockpile.
I will buy Sears, Kohls, and eBay/PayPal if the deal is good enough.
I also have gift cards for use on real spend on hand.
I’d define stockpiling in this case, as having giftcards on hand before you know there’s a reselling deal, or real spend that you already know you’ll do.
PS: Are you actually finding good things at Sears to resell?
I do some reselling and stockpiling. If a deal isn’t profitable for reselling (or if I’ll simply get more value by using the card myself), then I’ll hold onto it. Lowe’s is a good recent example with the 15% off on eBay – I’ll definitely use it eventually and save the full 15% whereas I might have only broken even reselling (before portals and points).
That makes sense… I feel like I seldom use giftcards myself, except for restaurants (well, other than this quarter).
I do a moderate amount of stockpiling, but also try to rotate my inventory as fast as possible when reselling for profit. I stockpile Target because we do a lot of our regular shopping there and even more so lately with all of the crazy discounts there has been for Target gift cards. Another one I stockpile is ebay because they frequently have gift card sales and buying the ebay cards at a discount makes the sales extra profitable.
Pretty much everything else only gets purchased if I plan to immediately flip it for profit because the reselling prices tend to fluctuate pretty heavily with the sales.
Wow, there’s stuff to resell at Target? (or just regular shopping?)
Just regular shopping at Target, we spend a couple hundred dollars there a month on groceries and miscellaneous, so I don’t worry about stocking up a little.
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I try to never stockpile for actual purchases. I am afraid of not keeping track of orphan funds. I buy a gift card right before my purchase with the denomination being slightly lower than the full purchase.
For reselling gift cards, I only buy if there is an opportunity right now since prices change frequently. No stockpiling unless it is from eBay since they sell so many different items I know it will be used at some point.
For reselling merchandise, I will stockpile certain merchants for better deals. I stockpile eBay and wait for increased eBay Bucks. I always bite on Staples and I usually wait until there is a shopping portal of at least 3x United, Southwest or AA miles. I buy Walmart gift cards to use at Sam’s Club in conjunction with AMEX $20 off $20. You can only use 4 GC at a time so I buy cheap high denomination gift cards one at a time until I have 4 to cover the purchase.
I don’t like stockpiling in general because it means I have to keep track with a spreadsheet and it is subject to mistakes and possible loss of funds. In general, I prefer to stockpile physical gift cards and I prefer to use eGift cards immediately.
Agreed – the keeping track of it is always the hardest part.
I used to try getting cards before sales or large purchases, but timing was always off. If it’s not a second hand purchase, I’ll hold onto cards until the deal comes along. I resell on eBay and Amazon and source merchandise almost everywhere. I know what cards are always available at a discount and which are hard to find. I must have thirty Sears cards because they are so easy to trade up or use for buying resale items! Also they are among the most discounted to get with points (I rarely use points for travel, MS is strictly for cash or resale opportunities.) I got stuck with a bunch of TRU cards because they used to allow trading up G/C. Now I will wait for Black Friday to unload them. Amazon is the best, you can load your account and the risk vanishes (except for the float issue.) Grocery G/C are like cash if they let you buy third party G/C and have an FR program.
Dave, thanks for your comment, on the TRU giftcards, remember, they also work at BRU, and this does seem to be a pretty popular time for folks to have babies (at least on the East Coast), there are some good reselling deals to be had.
I like to keep a@ $100. gift cards from Finish Line, Macy’s, etc. around as I know I’ll be using them for
Amazon FBA purchases. Usually can get for 10%-20% discount if you have alerts set.
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