New Marketplaces Buy, Sell, Trade Gift Cards

[mandy]

Instead of buying themselves a nice little something, thousands of people are selling unwanted gift cards at a discount, swapping them like baseball cards and buying them up to use for their holiday shopping.   

It has the air of a mini stock market: On Cardavenue.com yesterday, a $200 Best Buy gift card was going for $175 with less than a minute left to bid. Meanwhile, another user was looking to trade a $25 Gap card for one from eBay, Marshall's, Target, clothing store Guess or home furnishings store...

Total gift-card sales this year are expected to reach $66 billion...

...12 percent to 14 percent of those cards are likely to go unredeemed. That has created a growing "aftermarket" for the cards

full article: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/con...technology