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Use Up or Sell Your Gift Cards: A Good Source of "Found" Money

The Average Household has $69 in Unused Gift Cards

News reports claim that in 2006 there were 8 billion of dollars of retail gift cards left unused. The population of the U.S. in 2006 was around 300 million people, with 2.59 people on average per household. That means the average household had an average of $69 in unused gift cards just lying around collecting dust, some with monthly service charges slowly eroding any value initial value the cards once had. So look around the house, find that desk drawer where your gift cards are stashed and use them up before they lose any value they once had or before the retailer goes out of business.

Sell Gift Cards You Can't Use

If you have a gift card from a store that isn't in your local area and you can't use it online, you can always trade or sell the card either at one of the online gift card swap web sites or auction it off on eBay. I sold a $50 gift card from a department store chain that didn't have any local stores on eBay for $45. I got less than the $45 after paying all of the eBay and Paypal fees, but it at least I did get some money out of what was otherwise to me a worthless card.

Using Up Your Gift Cards Online

For Mastercard, Visa and American Express gift cards, I have found the best place to use them is online at Amazon. Many stores will say they accept the gift cards, but in reality when the store clerks swipe the cards they just don't work. I took some of our unused gift cards to the mall recently and for one reason or another, no stores accepted them, even though they all supposedly had valid balances. I eventually found that using them online at Amazon they worked just fine.

Visit my blog for detailed instructions on how to use American Express, Visa and Mastercard gift cards up at Amazon.com.

To use an American Express, Visa or Mastercard gift card at Amazon, all you have to do is register the card like a normal charge card, enter the expiration date, and for the cardholder's name type in exactly what is printed on the cards, usually something like "A gift card for you" or "Gift Card Holder". I used up my generic charge card gift cards this way buying groceries on Amazon, including a case of juice drinks and a case of canned ravioli. Amazon actually sells a lot of nonperishable grocery items, so when money is tight you can actually use your credit card gift cards to buy staples like food or shampoo.

Squeezing Every Penny Out of Your Card

One problem is that Amazon treats the gift cards like a regular charge card, so you can't make purchases and then pay any remaining balances with yet another regular charge card. Use the following options to use up every penny on your gift cards at Amazon.

1) Make your purchase come out to exactly the balance on your card, i.e. if you have $17.02 left on your card buy exactly $17.02 worth of merchandise. This can be a bit tricky to do.

2) Buy a gift card from Amazon to use in conjunction with your credit card gift card. For example, if you have $17.02 left on your gift card and have purchases totaling $25.40, you can buy a gift certificate to send to yourself from Amazon for the difference of $8.38. Then when you make your purchase, use your Amazon gift certificate first and put the balance on your Mastercard or American Express gift card ($17.02 gift card + $8.38 Amazon gift certificate you mailed to yourself = $25.40). If you've done the math correctly, you gift card balance should now be exactly zero.

One advantage to using your gift cards online is that you can usually check your balance right before making your purchase, so you know exactly how much is on the card. I had an American Express gift card with about $5.00 left on it, which I tried to use up at Amazon. At the Amazon checkout, the screen informed me that my gift card didn't have enough left to make the purchase. If I hadn't been on the Internet I might have believed that, but since I had checked the card a few minutes before I knew exactly what the balance should have been. I called American Express to complain and they somehow cleared the card to be used again with my $5, plus they gave me an extra few dollars for my time.

Further Reading -

"Swapping Unused Gift Cards Begets a Brand-New Industry." Salt Lake Tribune (Salt Lake City, UT). McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. 2004.

"With Soaring Gift Cards Sales Poised to Exceed $80 Billion in 2006, Unused Card Values are also on the Rise." PR Newswire. PR Newswire Association LLC. 2006.