The economics of unused gift cards

I hate getting gift cards. If someone feels the need to give me a gift but doesn&#x27;t want to put thought into it, cash would be a much better choice.<p>When I do get a gift card, what I end up doing is giving it to someone else who would appreciate it more. Or, if I can&#x27;t find such a person (it tends to be 50-50), then I sell it through a local classified ad site for 50% of the value it contains.

I like gift cards as long as it&#x27;s for a store that I would normally shop at anyways.<p>But a few years ago, I was given a gift card to Macy&#x27;s. I don&#x27;t shop at Macy&#x27;s and had a hard time finding something to get. Every single thing I looked at, I could get at half the price basically anywhere else. I ended up buying some kitchen stuff, but felt like the giver&#x27;s money was wasted.<p>The <i>worst</i> gift card in my experience is a Visa&#x2F;MC&#x2F;AmEx gift card. It is often a pain to deal with them if the balance on the card isn&#x27;t enough to cover a purchase unless the business you&#x27;re spending it at is capable to splitting a purchase over multiple credit cards <i>and</i> the cashier knows how to do that.

I only ever get Amazon gift cards. Don&#x27;t know what I would do with something like a Red Lobster gift card.<p>It&#x27;s easy to redeem them immediately and have that balance in my account forever.

At least in my family, we only do gift cards for restaurants. It still has the symbolism of a well-thought gift.<p>Otherwise, I just give my niece and nephews cash.<p>(Personally, I hate gift cards. They&#x27;re usually at a place I&#x27;d never shop, so I end up buying something of marginal value.)

For a while, I would receive gift cards as gifts from my mother. She isn&#x27;t the type of person to buy gift cards for people. But, for a while, she worked at a large supermarket chain, which meant that she could buy gift-cards from the store she works in <i>below cost</i>, i.e. that she could pay $90 to activate a $100 gift card.<p>This would probably be the one-and-only time that gift cards are really &quot;better than cash.&quot;

An economist one said &quot;Socks and gift cards are the junk bonds of gifts&quot;<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.npr.org&#x2F;2019&#x2F;12&#x2F;16&#x2F;788587668&#x2F;the-efficient-christmas-why-economists-hate-gifts?t=1578380529104" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.npr.org&#x2F;2019&#x2F;12&#x2F;16&#x2F;788587668&#x2F;the-efficient-chris...</a>

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.giftbit.com&#x2F;business-solutions&#x2F;send-gift-cards-in-bulk&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.giftbit.com&#x2F;business-solutions&#x2F;send-gift-cards-i...</a> Is trying to help close the gap so that you can get something back if it&#x27;s unredeemed

Does anybody know of any non-scammy ways to turn visa gift cards into cash&#x2F;crypto? I’d love to do something irresponsible with mine, like gamble at a bitcoin casino or something.

I literally just toss them in the trash because I know I&#x27;ll never use them.

I&#x27;m interested in the economics and law of when this is counted as income.<p>The article says that in the general case, the company only counts the card as income once it is redeemed. Until then it is counted as a liability.<p>This makes a little sense, since they still owe you goods and services, but (1) aren&#x27;t the goods&#x2F;services they are offering worth less <i>to them</i> than the value on the card, and (2) aren&#x27;t they generating interest off that?<p>Next, it says that under a 2009 law, the companies can start counting it as income sooner (6-24 months), and the accompanying article suggests that this is good for the companies&#x27; bottom line. But wouldn&#x27;t it really be the opposite? Before they counted it as income, surely they had all the benefits of the money and it&#x27;s not even being taxed as income yet? Wouldn&#x27;t they want to hold off on counting it as income as long as possible?