As I detailed near the bottom of My Latest Get Rich Slow Scheme: Gift Card Arbitrage post, I recently took advantage of a Safeway “Just For U” digital coupon to buy Gap gift cards at 20% off. Ever since then, I have been checking my Safeway app on a regular basis to look for more deals. A 20% off Jiffy Lube gift cards (not great) that could only be used once came and went, but yesterday a much better deal appeared. Once again, all Gap brand gift cards are 20% off and this deal might be even better than the last one!
Last time Safeway had this offer, I bought several thousand dollars worth of gift cards to resell and generated a lot of miles and points on my credit cards. A quick glance at Gift Card Granny’s sell page reveals that gap brands can be sold for up to 82% through Monster Gift Cards (Gap Kids). There are also several options to sell them digitally for 81.5% through Giftcards.com as either Gap Kids or Old Navy if you prefer that. As any Gap brand gift card can be used at any Gap brand store, you can sell them digitally as whichever type is worth the most. I’m not sure if mailing them in will offer you the same (as the end customer might be confused), so it might be worth asking before you ship off hundreds of dollars worth. Either way, you can buy these cards at 80% off and sell them above that price which means a cash profit as well as miles/points on whatever credit card you use.
As Safeway is a grocery store, any credit card that offers a grocery bonus would be great to use here, but any card can be used profitably to generate whichever points you prefer. Keep in mind that you will also be earning double fuel points on gift card purchases, so every $500 worth you buy is good for $1 off per gallon at any Safeway or Chevron gas station (I think they are ending the Chevron part soon though).
The reason I said this deal might be better than last time is because instead of saying “Save $5 Instantly”, the deal is worded as “Save 20% Instantly”. Last time, I had to buy a bunch in $25 dollar quantities which of course made checkout pretty slow and meant I had to type in way more numbers to actually sell them. With the new wording, I should be able to put any denomination on the cards and still save the full 20%. I’ll probably stick to $100 cards for selling on Raise and $300 cards for selling to Giftcards.com. I can make more by selling on Raise, but my velocity is much slower because I have to wait for someone to buy them. With Giftcards.com, I can sell them instantly and get paid pretty quickly to allow myself to go buy more. I’m a bulk seller with both of these websites, so the standard limit of how much you can sell doesn’t apply. Here’s a pic of the deal from last time:
I’m not sure if this offer is targeted or not, so check your Safeway app and report back if you’re able to take advantage of this great deal.
Thanks for the deal. I just wanted you to know that this post didn’t show up on my RSS feed, but I found it through Doctor of Credit. What’s the process to become a bulk reseller? Did you have to become an LLC first? I’m looking forward to everything on here!
Also, what is your experience with Raise? With the original 20% discount, and 15% Raise commission, how do you list the cards? You’d have to sell them for ~$94 to break even and walk away with just the original credit card points (which is fine).
If you become a bulk seller with Raise, the commission gets better than 15% and varies depending on the specific brand. Right now, there are a ton of Gap/Old Navy gift cards on there, so it will be tough to sell them for more than I could get by going with SaveYa unfortunately. If the market becomes less saturated for those brands, I should be able to get a couple extra percent above what the other buyers pay.
I’m still figuring out the best way to use Raise, I’ve had good luck with big brands like Best Buy and Walmart, but other cards have been pretty slow to move for a good price which ties up my money.
Thanks for the heads up on the RSS thing. It definitely made it’s way into the raw feed (https://moneymetagame.com/feed/), but feedly didn’t pick it up for me either.
I recently switched hosting providers, so maybe it has something to do with that. I’ll send an email to feedly and see if it’s something on their side.
For becoming a bulk seller, I did it with both Raise and giftcards.com/SaveYa before I created my LLC. The process was as simple as sending them an email or filling our their bulk seller form online. They asked some simple questions like where I get my cards from and how much I was expecting to sell monthly, but each approved me despite having minimal sales with them previously (<$500 worth).
Right after I typed this out, Feedly picked up the article (~5 hours late). Hopefully future ones go right away, but we’ll have to wait until my next post to see.
Good luck with the RSS feed. I’m sure you’ll check it for a while now. I was wondering what their bulk reseller criteria would be (and if it is possible to lose it for reduced sales), given that their limit prohibits you from showing them how much you would really sell.
Doesn’t appear that the SaveYa page (link) is good anymore:
Page reported as follows:
OOPS, we no longer have this page!
This page doesn’t seem to exist. Let’s get you where you need to go.
Ah, I just now realize that looks like a link. What I meant was giftcards.com AND SaveYa. They’re owned by the same company so I grouped them together, but I can see how that was confusing.
FYI- My experience is that I sold the cards for my cost, but of course gained in Fuel Rewards (worth $100) and CC Rewards (worth about $64). So, I am happy with those results, but would love to increase our % returns.
FYI, I had the 20% off offer last time. Used it repeatedly on $500 GAP cards. That offer expired 4/4. This time I have the $5 back on $25 in California. Like you say its identical except for the amount of effort required. Lets see, $500 / $25 is 20 times as many cards for the same result. I may only use it for hitting some minimum spend this time.
For this offer, can you buy multiple $25 Gap Gift Cards in one transactions? Say I buy 4x $25 gap gift cards will it deduct $5 dollars from each? Thanks! I am eager to hear more great deals from you.
If you have the “Save 20%” coupon, you can buy any denomination and any amount you want per transaction. If you have the “Save $5” coupon, you should only buy $25 cards to maximize the savings and yes, you can buy multiple in one transaction. The most I bought at once last month with the “Save $5” was 20 cards ($500 value for $400), but I don’t see why there would be any limit considering the “Unlimited” nature of the deal.
Thanks Noah. I was hoping that I could purchase in denominations that exceeded $25. Looks like I am going to buy 20x of $25 dollar gcs. Safeway is coding these gift cards at 2x in gas rewards pts on a side note. =)
We really thank you for bringing this promotion to us…of course we already Just4U members. Our issue is unloading the (huge?) amounts of gift cards without going through a lot of extra hassle, work & registration as a ‘bulk reseller’ which we don’t consider ourselves. We are not sure what that categorization means with these online gift card resellers.