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Gift Card Churning on eBay
For those into buying and reselling gift cards, eBay has become a real powerhouse player in the game. There’s recently been a few more sellers who started selling new gift cards on eBay and there are lots of temporary opportunities to buy discounted gift cards.
What’s even better is that two of the sellers – Paypal Digital and Giftcardmall – sell eBay gift cards and they often offer them at a small discount. These eBay gift cards can then be used up on the next gift card deal that comes up, making the deal even better. See Of Gift Card Churning & eBay Gift Card Sales.
And you’ll often be able to earn portal points on BOTH of the transactions.
Targeted eBay Bucks
Another amazing deal that eBay offers is targeted eBay Bucks promotions. On the surface, it sounds like an abstract rewards program which you’ll hopefully be able to make use of sometime in the future. In practice, however, these eBay Bucks are almost as good as cash for someone who shops on eBay often. Though these Bucks do expire after 30 days, they’re so easy to use up by buying merchandise, buying gift cards, or even buying eBay gift cards with the eBay Bucks which can thus extend the life of the eBay Bucks. I literally view them as cash-with-a-hassle.
Incidentally, there is currently a targeted eBay Bucks offer of 5x (or 10% back) on any item which costs $100 or more. Deal runs 5/19/15 – 5/20/15. Check if you were targeted and make sure to activate the offer first. The bonus Bucks amount will show up at the time of purchase so you aren’t left guessing if the offer is being applied to the purchase.
Target Gift Cards on eBay
We just noticed that Giftcardmall on eBay started selling Target gift cards as well! (Link) They are available in $25, $50, and $100 denominations. (Yeah, I also wish they sold $500 denominations.)
Why is that exciting? Well, previously the most valuable gift card sold new on eBay was Staples and Sears; there was never 90% territory gift cards sold as new. Now we can buy 90%-level cards on eBay, and they’re physical gift cards which makes it easier to resell for many.
We noted a while back that Target gift cards were starting to show up at Rite Aid and since then I’ve seen them at many other merchants, apparently as part of a new gift card strategy from Target. Now we’re can get them on eBay as well, though not in the $500 denominations being sold elsewhere.
Though you can buy second-hand gift cards on eBay for the likes of Target, Exxon, and Walmart, there is some risk in doing that. Additionally, these cards often sell for higher than their value, something which is difficult to understand. [At one point, I was selling over-priced Walmart gift cards on eBay myself and I got more questions from buyers asking, ‘why in the world would anyone buy these?’, than all other questions I received from buyers combined. I really don’t know the answer, just that they sold. Probably has do with targeted eBay Bucks offers or other targeted eBay offers, along with some other factors. The margins were quite thin and there is some risk involved so I haven’t done this in a while.]
How to Leverage
With regards to the Target gift cards on eBay, I’ll try not drawing circles and arrows here, but consider the fact that: there are often targeted 5x eBay Bucks available (including now), Paypal accepts Amex gift cards, you can use eBay gift cards to purchase these, and you can get 1.1% back from the portal.
On thing to bear in mind is that there is a shipping fee charged by Giftcardmall which ends up between 1% and 3% of the purchase price, depending on the quantity of gift cards purchased.
In the final analysis, this isn’t any killer deal to jump all over, just something that any serious gift card churner should keep in their arsenal.
