My buying and reselling gift cards experiment

As I mentioned yesterday, I spent about 15 hours last week trying to see if I could make a profit by taking full advantage of various promotions, the large majority of that time consumed by buying and reselling gift cards to max out some current Amex Offers. Luckily I live in a city where it’s not hard to find a Whole Foods, Dollar General and Carrabba’s on my way home, so I didn’t have to go too far out of my way. The actual purchasing of the gift cards went much smoother than expected, but it was the work on the front and back end that took the most time.I have 18 American Express cards at my disposal, including authorized user cards and Bluebird cards. That means that I needed to do 54 separate transactions. Sounds terrible, but it went pretty fast and I ended up having great conversations with cashiers at both Carrabba’s and Whole Foods who were interested in traveling with points and miles themselves.

I decided to keep a few cards for our own use and sell the rest on Cardpool. I like this guide by Doctor of Credit, ‘The Complete Guide to Selling Your Unwanted Gift Cards for Cash.‘ I did two separate orders on Cardpool to ensure I did not go over the $1,000 per account limit for cashback on Be Frugal.

Here are the basic steps:

Step 1: Register for Amex Offers. You can do this by logging in to your online American Express account and looking under ‘My Offers’ or linking to social media. Complete guide from Miles to Memories here, and info on setting up a “Amex Sync Machine,” courtesy of Frequent Miler.

Step 2: Visit retailers to purchase gift cards. For this example, I’m using Whole Foods. The offer was $15 back on $75 purchase, so since I have 18 cards linked to the offer I knew I needed to spend $1,350. This cashier was more comfortable ringing it all up as separate transactions, but sometimes you’ll get one willing to ring it all up as one or a few transactions and split tender 18 ways (i.e. as many cards as you have).