Holiday Gift Cards - Sell Your Gift Card - Buy Gift Cards

Gift Card Auctions

Buy Gift Card
It is that time of the year when you are trying to decide what to get that someone special something for the holidays. Giving someone money as a present tells them that you put little to no thought into their gift. To tell you the truth when I was a kid cash was my favorite gift. There is something that is more thoughtful than cash and that is a gift card. With this being a website that focuses on auctions it is my duty to tell you if you are going to "buy gift cards" through an auction what you should expect to spend. The first thing I can tell you is if you plan on buying an Amazon Gift Card on eBay you are not going to get a deal. On the other hand if you want to buy an AMC Gift Card on eBay you are going to save yourself about 10% to 15% depending on shipping charges.

Sell Gift Card
Now for the flip side let's say you get a gift card from your mother-in-law this holiday season that you do not like and you want to "sell your gift card". There are a few websites out there that like giftcardrescue.com, giftcardcastle.com, plastic jungle or cardpool.com will pay you for your gift cards. I went to cardpool.com and entered a Walmart $100 gift card and they offered $90 and I also checked a $100 gift card to AMC Theatres and they buy price was $73. If you were to sell your gift cards on eBay it looks like you would net another 10% but would also incur seller fees. The sell value also can be impacted by your eBay rating. If you have a lower rating you won't maximize the value of the auction like you would if you had a 100% feedback with 1,000 sales.

Looking at the statistics below there seems to be no relevancy if you get a $25, $50, $100 or $500 gift card as they all sell for about 94% of their list price. Amazon, Walmart and Target are the easiest gift cards to sell and will yield the highest returns. Regal Cinemas, Barnes & Nobles and AMC Theatre gift cards return the least amount of value based on the statisitcs below. We do not track "gift card auctions" for the mom and pop businesses but based on the results below it looks like the easier access to use a gift card tends to yield the greatest return.

The statistics above are derived from auctions where users are required to bid on the item. None of the data above comes from buy it now auctions.