Gift Card Wiki Adds Fantastic New Features
A couple of weeks ago I wrote about Gift Card Wiki. The website is a fantastic comparison tool for comparing the prices for both buying and selling gift cards. You can find more detailed information about how the site works in my original post, but today I wanted to talk about a couple of new features they have added since then.
With the site being so new, there were a couple of issues relating to inaccuracy. The biggest issue I noticed was sell rates being incorrect or out of date. While the rates to purchase gift cards were updated every hour, they weren’t able to keep the same accuracy when it came to rates for selling cards. Fortunately, I can report that the development team has made great improvements.
A few days ago the website owner emailed me to talk about a few new features. Here they are:
- Added display rates for both physical cards and code only.
- Add the rate change (in green or red) from yesterday.
- Sell rates are updated more frequently and more accurate.
- Added more re-sellers such as GiftCardBin, CardCash, etc.
Wow! That is pretty amazing work. Since I received this notice from them, I have been looking at the sale rates and they seem to be much more accurate. I’m not going to say they are 100% yet, but they are certainly as accurate as Gift Card Granny. Now lets look at two new features that are fantastic. One of them is a game changer.
Physical vs. Code – A Killer Feature
It can really be a pain to figure out who buys digital cards for each merchant and whether or not they penalize you for them. In fact, sometimes you have to get deep within a sale before you find out if they require you to send the physical card or not.
Now Gift Card Wiki has eliminated this problem. They have separated out sell rates for “Physical” sales where you mail in the cards and “Code Only” sales where you simply enter in a code online. This type of information is critical, especially if you are considering whether or not to buy eGift cards where there is nothing physical to send in.
A few days ago when Raise was offering 3% off all gift cards, I was able to find a merchant’s cards for sale on Raise at a good rate. I then went to Gift Card Wiki and saw that SaveYa was paying more than my cost for the digital codes. I placed an order on Raise through the portal, received the codes within two minutes and immediately sold them to SaveYa. It took less than 5 minutes and I made about a 7% profit on the cards.
Rate Changes Day to Day
While not as revolutionary as the physical vs. code feature, the rate change notification (as shown above) is a nice little tool. I think this is really valuable when trying to spot trends in a card’s value. If you see almost all of the exchanges lowering rates then perhaps there is too much supply or a policy change. It definitely is useful and something I am glad that they added.
Conclusion
I want to stress that I have nothing to do with Gift Card Wiki, but I love the site and I find it to be a valuable tool. The owner seems committed to improving the site’s features, so as long as they continue to innovate, I will continue to use their service and share about it with all of you.
Have you had a chance to use Gift Card Wiki since I originally wrote about it? What do you think of these new features? Let me know in the comments!
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[…] Gift Card Wiki Adds Killer Feature – Gift Card Arbitrage Made Even Easier! by Miles to Memories. Love this site, already way better than giftcardgranny and continually improving. Two thumbs up for these new changes, especially the egiftcard one. […]
Thanks for this post. This is a pretty awesome feature. I usually had to do a fake purchase to determine if they accept virtual cards. This is a huge time saver, as was the chart by moneymetagame.
Over the past few months I’ve gravitated into gift card reselling and as a major component of how I MS. The past month alone I’ve done more than $15,000 in gift card sales and am in the midst of spending off $10,000 worth of AGC purchased during the BBVA NBA promo with the 5x points. It makes liquidation easy, and any pure profit on the sale itself is icing on top.
C’mon dude, add a link to Gift Card Wiki.
It wasn’t intentional. I have now added a link.
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=giftcardwiki
Third one down.
I had to get nasty with one site, given I perceive they were playing games. I would receive one or more email notices about a gift card(s) I wanted and even immediately clicking a link on the page, I was sol.
IMHO, buying a gift card from a third party, isn’t worth the risk. I do like it when some businesses offer their gift card on one of these site.
So Shawn… What do you think the practical limits are here? For example, let’s say you find a situation in which you can buy and sell gift cards and no costs / profits arbitrage situation, what’s the most volume one should do?
I’m just unclear on the risks at play here (with either the selling or buying GC vendors) or the thresholds that would get a credit card company queasy and suspicious.
Every reseller has a limit they will buy from you. If you want to do large volumes then you need to become a bulk seller. What I would suggest is starting small with some of the eBay gift card deals and then working your way up. Its best to dabble and get a feel for it before really jumping in.
In short, don’t risk more than you’re willing to lose. Are you comfortable with locking up $1,000 if the gift cards are lost in transit while you try to get replacement cards issued? What about $5,000? $15,000? The volume is directly linked to your risk tolerance.
Back in the day when I was a professional online poker player I always told other players to never risk more than they were comfortable losing. While it was a positive expectation value, it doesn’t mean it’ll always end that way. You have to be comfortable with floating money at a relatively low ROI of 0-10%.
I started earlier this year and for the first few transactions I tested the waters and didn’t maximize the theoretical profit potential. If you’re curious about it, try a few small transactions. It’ll help you build a history with some of the more reputable sites too (Saveya, Cardpool) in the event you want to sign up for their bulk seller status.
Yes! I used this to resell my BP giftcards from eBay. Bought 2 for $180, sold for $181.. (plus there’s the eBay bucks and points!) $1 is better than nothing!!