There are many gift card resell websites, for example, the well known website: Raise.com. But which one is the best for your demand?
I personally use Gift Card Wiki a lot. The website shows you all the choices you have.
Contents
1. Instruction
For example: Starbucks gift card. We can see which website provides the best discount.
You can use the filter to set the value you are looking for. You can also set if you want physical or e-gift. You can also exclude some websites that you don’t like.
On the right you can also see how much you can get if you want to sell your gift card.
You can see the rate of both buying and selling clearly at first glance. There are also some extra information such as Warranty, helping you pick what you want.
2. Interesting Features
Gift Card Wiki provides many other interesting features.
2.1. Hot Deals
Click Hot Deals on the top of the website page. You can see current best deals. There are 2 numbers that you need to know, one is Arbitrage, the other is Attract. You can see the formulas on the right of the page.
Arbitrage shows you how much you can earn if you buy from a market and sell it to another. It is almost impossible though. When it is over 100%, for example, 102%, it means you can earn 2% by buying and selling the gift card. I highly don’t recommend doing this. The risk is way higher than the earnings.
Attract compares the current discount to the average discount of last 30 days. As shown below, the current discount rate of Speedway gift card is 2.9 times of the last 30 days’ average. Attract means if it is the best time for you to shop now or wait.
You can sort and filter easily on this page. You will always find what you want.
As shown below, you can see the Market Share of the gift card you search. If you search for Starbucks, you can see that Giftcardzen.com has $1.27 million of Star bucks gifts. OMG, this is a way larger market than I thought.
Click Markets button on the top of the website, you can also see inventory. What’s even shocking is that $1.27 million of Starbucks Gift Cards is only the 10% of Giftcardzen.com’s inventory. 25% is iTunes, which is $3.18 million. OMG.
2.3. Shopping Portals Recommendations
On the left of the picture below, you can see partners :>.
The right side is what it matters, you can see which shopping portal is currently providing the best cash back rate for the merchant you are searching. For more details you can read here.
2.4. Forum
You can talk about the latest hottest deals with others in the forum. Bloggers are not always the first to share deals.
2.5. Similar Brands
As shown above, you can see the discounts of similar brands. Sometimes you are not stick to the brand you are searching right?
2.6. eBay Auction
The website not only provides you the discount rate from gift card reselling markets. You may also find great deals at eBay.
2.7. Alert
You need to sign up and log in to get alerts. Click the Alert Button on the top of the website. You can set your own rule. For example, alert only when there is a Target gift card that is between $25 and $100 and the discount rate is higher than 5%. You can even set alert rule using Arbitrage or Attract mentioned above. You can also set alert for selling. The frequency can be hourly or daily.
3. My personal Suggestions
- Gift cards are trouble. I have met too many different situations of bad gift cards. Storing gift cards is not smart. When storing gift cards, you are aware of the risk of having bad gift cards and spending hours on the phone to talk to some “helpful” specialist. So my suggestion is, buy only when you really need it. Good news is, Raise.com now provides 365 days Warranty, which is long enough I think. It is great that Giftcardwiki.com shows you warranty of all the markets.
- Raise and GiftMe send gift cards in seconds. CardCash/ABC GiftCard send in minutes, but may review your purchase if it is not the first order of that day. Other markets usually will review your purchase so you are not likely to receive your gift card in a short period of time. Don’t buy from them if you are already at the counter. It means huge that a market can send gift cards in second. That is why Raise is the biggest market for now I think. I hope Giftcardwiki.com can show estimated send time in the future.
- Many merchants have limitations of using gift cards, such as how many cards you can use in one transaction, or e-gift card can only be used online, etc. You have to know these limitations before you shop. I hope Giftcardwiki.com can show these rules in the future.
- It will be better to show which credit card is the best for this market. For example, AT&T card (3x) for Raise (Ending soon), and Ink + PayPal (5x) for CardCash/ABC gift cards.