Imagine shopping at your favorite store and getting an automatic 10% off. This can happen. You may have notice those gift cards on eBay. Are they legit? Can one really buy them for about 90 cents on the dollar? They answer to these questions are yes and yes. The amount of the discount will vary inversely with the popularity of that store's gift card. The more popular the store's gift card, the less discount that you would see.

If one has a large purchase coming, this becomes a no-brainer. But, like everything else in life, one needs to be cautious of a few things. Some stores limit the number of gift cards that can be used per transaction. One is to protect themselves from fraud. Another is to speed-up the checkout process. Just imagine the cashier's face when you give them 40 $25-denominated gift cards to pay for a $1,000 purchase.

One way around the problem is to buy only large-denominated gift cards. Another is to trade-up the small-denominated ones for the large-denominated ones.

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