Submitted by Jon Freeman
Were you given a gift card recently that you don’t want? Perhaps you were given a gift card for your birthday or some other occasion (like over the holidays), and the gift card is to a place or company that you don’t buy stuff from regularly. In fact, you seriously doubt that you will ever end up using it. The result could be your gift card never gets used. You may have more than one unwanted gift card like this, and you are unsure what to do about it. Did you know that you can take that gift card and sell it for cash?
According to David Pogue’s book, Pogue’s Basics: Money – Essential Tips and Shortcuts, there are websites where you can sell your unwanted gift cards for cash. You will not get full value for them, but you will receive a lot more than zero – what you would get if an unwanted gift card stays in a drawer forever. Pogue says that you could get 65 to 90 percent of the card value in cash. Here are some card exchange websites Pogue mentions in his book where you could sell gift cards: cardcash.com, raise.com, cardpool.com, and giftcardgranny.com.
You could be in a very different position. You don’t have a gift card you want to sell, but you would like to buy a gift card at a discount. You can use some of the same websites mentioned previously in this article to buy discounted gift cards other folks are selling. Pogue recommends doing this when you want to buy a gift card for a restaurant or store because you can buy gift cards for less than face value. He says, “If you’re in the market for a gift card, it’s like free money.” David Pouge’s book, “Pogue’s Basics: Money – Essential Tips and Shortcuts”, can be checked out from the Gwinnett County Public Library in book or ebook form. You can access more money management resources by visiting the GCPL Personal Finance Guide.