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I’m always of the mindset that it’s a good idea to get your miles and points from a variety of sources.  While credit card signup bonuses are currently my most lucrative avenue of earning points (and are likely to remain so for the foreseeable future), I think it’s a good idea to diversifyciti-credit-card-churning-rules-cards

(SEE ALSO: How I got 1,000,000 points…. and you can TOO)

With advents such as the Chase 5/24 rule (if it exists), and other exclusions that limit credit card signup bonuses, I’ve done some work with manufacturing spending (basically buying gift cards and redeeming for MOs which still works in my area), as well as product reselling and gift card reselling / arbitrage

The basic idea of gift card arbitrage is you find a gift card on sale, you buy it, and then sell it at a higher percentage.  Adding in things like credit card points, cashback from portals, eBay bucks and other things can help make these deals profitable.  The trick of course, is to find these deals 🙂

I’ve predominantly sold these on Raise, which is one of the gift card exchanges, though I have used some of the other exchanges as well (though thankfully not Gift Card Rescue)

Another way to sell gift cards?

Over on the Points With a Crew Slack channel, we have been talking about gift card selling in #giftcardselling.  There has been some talk about a new site / exchange to resell gift cards.  He asked that I not share his site publicly on the blog yet as they are still in somewhat of an open beta, but I think that this just goes to show the power of networking – many of the good deals are not shared publicly.

I have sold a few gift cards at this new site, but it’s still too soon that I have not been paid yet (should be in the next week or two), so those cards and card amounts are not included in the totals

Breaking down the gift card totalsgap-gift-card

I finally updated my gift card totals from the past few months.  I don’t claim to be a “power seller” but thought I would share my experiences.  Most of the volume from these come from a deal late last year in-store at Kroger with 20% off Gap and Old Navy cards.  As you might imagine, the market got flooded pretty fast on those.  Instead of just lowering my prices, I held on to a good chunk of my cards and recently have been able to sell them on Raise at near face value

  • Total gift card face value: $18,030.00 ($15,225 of these were Gap / Old Navy cards)
  • Purchase price: $14,540.00
  • Average discount: 19.4% (again most of these were 20% off Gap cards)
  • Sell amount (on Raise): $17,271.73
  • Payout (after Raise commission): $15,472.42
  • Total profit: $932.42
  • Profit percentage: 6.41%

I have not sold all of my gift cards (because I keep buying more!) but rather than keep putting this post off, I thought I’d at least share what I’ve got!  I should point out that this is the straight sell price, so it doesn’t count any credit card points or portal cashback.  I generally would recommend not counting on either of those things when making a purchase decision (which does make it a bit harder to find deals).  But in this case we’re probably looking at at least 20K in miles and points and maybe $100 in cashback (a lot of these deals were in-store or at Staples, which usually doesn’t track portal cashback on gift cards in my experience)

Have you done any gift card reselling / arbitrage?  Any tips or tricks you’d like to share?


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