Via Moneymetagame, SVM on eBay now sells $250 physical gift cards for Exxon/Mobil, BP, and Chevron gas gift cards. These are full-price cards, but they are great for maxing out eBay spend for eBay Bucks, portal promos, or eBay gift cards.
Previously, the max denomination was $100 with a $3.95 shipping fee per card. These new cards have shipping fees of $4.95 per card, bringing down the fees from ~4% to just ~2%. That significantly changes the math for reselling purposes.
Gas gift cards also tend to hold their value on the exchanges so there isn’t much risk of devaluation; if it goes down a few percentage points, you can just wait a month or two and it will be back up.
- $250 Exxon/Mobil gift card, $4.95 shipping for each card
- $250 BP gift card, $4.95 shipping for each card
- $250 Chevron gift card, $4.95 shipping for each card
Sample Deal Scenario
As an example, currently many of us are targeted for a bonus Bucks promo of 10% back. If you buy four $250 cards, you’ll pay $1020 and get $100 back in Bucks ($100 max per transaction and max $500 total). You can also get 2% back from the portal, or $20, bringing your final cost of the $1000 in gift cards to $900. If you sell them to an exchange for $900, you’ll break-even and rack up free credit card points in the process.
Worth it? Probably not, but there are so many ways that it can be much more profitable. For example, currently there are numerous portal bonuses which can net you 4 or 5 miles per dollar on eBay spend with Southwest, United, and AAdvantage (Delta and Alaska already expired). Also, many people have eBay Bucks which were purchased at a discount in one of many ways, and can use an opportunity like this to cash them out. Remember that there are limits to the number of gift cards which can be used per Paypal account.
[Also note that eBay recently revamped their checkout and some people are having problems applying many gift cards to their purchases. Others are having some issues checking out without gift cards as well.]
Personally, I’m holding out because I prefer using up my Bucks on Target gift cards since I shop there a lot, but it’s good to know that $250 gas cards exist. Keep it in mind for future promos/portal-bonuses/Bucks-offers/coupon-codes on eBay and run straight to these cards.
We’ll add these cards to our List of Best Options for Full-Price Gift Cards on eBay.
