Stacking eBay Bucks Deals with Gift Card Discounts
Yesterday I wrote about a number of gift card deals on eBay. Among them were discounted cards for Toys R Us, Babies R Us, Hyatt, TGI Friday’s and a few other merchants. At the time I mentioned how I was only going to be purchasing the Toys R Us cards and holding off on the others. (The Toys R Us cards did sell out as I had predicted.)
The other deals are marginal at best and don’t leave much room to profit. I asserted yesterday that in the past we have seen eBay Bucks offers come around shortly after gift card deals. Thankfully that is exactly what happened. Look what was in my inbox this morning:
An Extra 6%
This means that I will get an extra 6% (8% vs. 2%) on purchases over $150. So now lets see how this affects a couple of the gift card deals from yesterday.
TGI Friday’s $50 for $40
eBay is selling $50 TGI Friday’s cards for $40 with a limit of 5. If I buy 5 cards the math works out like this:
- Cost of Cards: $200
- eBay Bucks earned: $16
- 1.1% portal cashback: $2.20
- Final cost: $181.80
- Discount off face: 27.28%
Now here are the current resale rates:
I don’t expect GiftCardZen’s 80% rate to hold, but instead think that all cards will be down to 75% soon. Lets figure out the math both ways.
80%
- Sell for $200 and profit $18.20
75%
- Sell for $187.50 and profit $5.70
Since I believe the 75% scenario to be the most likely, the 4X eBay Bucks promo just took a marginal deal and made it a lot more attractive.
Hyatt $200 Gift Cards for $175
You can also currently purchase a $200 Hyatt gift card for $175 with a limit of 2. Here is the math:
- Cost of cards $350
- eBay Bucks: $28
- 1.1% portal: $3.85
- Final cost: $318.15
- Discount off face: 20.47%
Now here are the resale rates:
As you can see, you should be able to sell the cards back at 80% of face value. That would amount to a $1.85 profit. Not a lot, but the eBay Bucks offer just took a unprofitable deal and made it into something more attractive.
Note: You may have postage costs to mail in the cards to a reseller. Keep those in mind when factoring in your overall costs.
Other Gift Card Deals
- Buy a $50 Sephora eGift card & get a $10 bonus – Limit 2
- $50 Aeropostale eGift card for $40 – Limit 4
- $100 Babies R Us gift card for $90 – Limit 2
Why Purchase for Such Low Profits
While the decision as to whether or purchase or not isn’t easy, I think deals like these are good, especially if you are a bulk seller. Not only are you able to rack up spending on your cards (or burn eBay gift cards you got at a discount), but you have merchandise to sell. The more cards you sell to a reseller, the more power you have when trying to negotiate rates, etc.
Of course this is also decent for meeting minimum spending requirements. You can drive to a store and purchase a $500 card and then drive to Walmart to liquidate it, or in this case, spend $550 and earn a $7.55 profit without leaving your house. Oh and of course you can always use these gift cards at the merchants for a decent discount as well.
How to Tell How Many Cards Are Left
Finally, if you are holding out on purchasing, you want to be able to tell how many cards are left. My thanks to Doctor of Credit for showing me this simple and easy way.
To find out how many cards are left, go to a deal page and enter a quantity. If the quantity you have entered is higher than the number of cards left, then you get the following message:
If there are enough total cards left, then you will get the following message:
In this case I started at 2,000 and worked my way down until I discovered that there were only 942 of these cards left. By getting the “lower number” message on 943 and then seeing it change on 942, I know that 942 is the quantity remaining! Simple and easy!
Conclusion
My strategy going forward is to monitor eBay gift card deals and hold off until they get close to selling out. This will give me the best opportunity to maximize eBay Bucks promotions, which can turn an unprofitable deal into one that makes money.
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Do you get 5x using Ink?
Only for cards sold by Paypal Digital Gifts. Most of the cards mentioned aren’t sold by Paypal Digital Gifts unfortunately.
I have some eBay GC in my Gyft wallet. If I use those to purchase GCs stated here, will I still qualify for those eBay bucks?
Yes.
I’m always nervous about Gift Card purchases tracking with portals. BeFrugal or TCB?
I’ve always had success with Top Cashback.
Other thoughts: eBay seems to have wised up and coded it so multiple items no longer trigger the minimum item price threshold. When I add 5 Friday’s cards to my cart, I’m still only getting 2% bucks because one card is worth $40. Hyatt does trigger 4x at $175.
You’ll see the correct amount on the final confirmation screen. I just rechecked and for Friday’s it is showing $16 in eBay Bucks for the $200 purchase.
Couple of thoughts.
Hyatt is listed as 85% on Cardpool and scheduled to drop to 81% on June 29th. This means for this Hyatt deal the best rate from Cardpool is 81%. What I’m insinuating is that we very well may see a drop in Hyatt pricing across the board (such as with Saveya) between now and the quickest time frame in which we can get it to the buyer. Saveya is the most viable candidate considering they accept digital gift cards (Source: GCW and moneymetagame).
The profit from the Hyatt deal is basically in your credit card rewards and/or discount in acquired ebay cards. I’m not entirely sure I’m going to pull the trigger on this deal. The Babies R Us deal is similar in that the rate is 82.5% from Saveya (digitally accepted) so you’re looking at basically a wash between the 4x ebay bucks and the 90% buy rate from Ebay. The profit in this case is the portal cb and cc/ebay gift card.
What I may do is buy Hyatt and/or Babies R Us in combination with Sephora in one purchase so that I can exceed them minimum requirement of the $150+ for 4x ebay bucks multiplier. My reason for possibly avoiding Hyatt is suspicion we may see reduced buy rates before having the ability to sell them.
This deal would be so much sweeter if the portals were paying out more than 1.1% but these deals (excluding TGIF) became viable with the ebay bucks promo so I can’t complain.
I don’t think your idea to combine the Hyatt/Babies R Us with Sephora is going to work. The system will treat them separately and only give you 6% back on the Sephora.
Yeah, you’re right that’s exactly what happened. It was still a $9 mm for me on the Sephora and it’s an ecode so I’m going to sell it to saveya later tonight when I’m at a pc.
I bought Hyatt, TRU and Sephora. I earned 48 ebay bucks and the net profit when I’m done liquidating will be about $45. Goes to show that the meat on the bone here was the ebay bucks and without it these wouldn’t have interested me in the slightest.
I dunno, I’m definitely signed up to receive eBay promos, and I’ve never received one of these offers, ever.
You hit the nail on the head. I must have gotten annoyed with all the spam ebay was sending and disabled the emails for promotions/discounts and such.
thanks!
Strangely enough I never get the increased ebay bucks… always just had the 2%.
Did you have to signup for it?
I checked spam folders, whats the email header?
Check to make sure you are opted in to receive promotional emails.