Do You Buy, Sell or Trade Gift Cards?

Smart Spending has a post that details how to buy, sell, and trade gift cards. The piece highlights Plastic Jungle, a site that helps you sell your unwanted gift cards, buy new ones at discounted prices, or trade your cards for ones you want.

This sounds like a good service, especially if you frequently shop at a set of stores. Seems like you could buy a card that you KNEW you would use -- spending only a portion of the face value for the card -- then go shopping. It's an easy way to save a boatload of money, right? Well, maybe not. Here's what I found out from checking the site (may be different not, but these were valid at the time of this writing):

• I looked for cards from several high profile companies (Amazon, Costco, and Walmart) and found nothing.

• Many cards had no savings at all (0% off AT&T, the Apple Store, Target, and Macy's). What's the point in buying from a site with 0% discount?

• Many of the good cards were offered for TRADE -- not for sale. So unless you had a card that met the postor's criteria, you were out of luck.

That said, there were some good deals. For example:

• 15% off AMC Theaters
• 15% off Banana Republic
• 10% off Barnes and Noble
• 8% off Home Depot

It's nothing earth-shattering (I was hoping to find 30-50% off deals), but still the deals aren't bad. If you could save 8% to 15% off many of your purchases, you'd be happy, wouldn't you?

Anyone out there ever use this site or one like it? I'd be interested in hearing about your experiences.

Comments

[Adam]

I used Plastic Jungle for the first time a couple weeks ago. I purchased a $240 Eddie Bauer gift card ;the seller was asking $180, but I made an offer of $150 and it was accepted. This was a pretty good deal to get 37.5% off and use a Chase Freedom card to pay for it for an additional 1% off. I received the Eddie Bauer merchandise credit receipt in the mail about 1 week later and used it without a problem. The seller told me that if I ever wanted any more to let him know. This makes me think that the seller is shoplifting merchandise and returning it without a receipt to get store credit to resell.

[Trent D.]

The 0% discount cards are a "deal" because there's some sort of way to purchase cards like that with referral links, netting a small discount from the referrer. Sites like FatWallet and Slickdeals can explain, since I don't know how it works.

[Jim]

I've bought a $20 off certificate on eBay before. It wasn't a gift card exactly but it still saved me $20 and I got a couple of them for a few dollars so it was a deep discount for me.

Jim

[Allen]

The 0% off cards are used for money laundering purposes of course! Or people who desperately need that card