There is now a black market for Target gift cards on Ebay. People will collect anything. Luckily for the people who are selling them the gift cards are free. I mean gift cards that haven't been assigned a monetary value. You can just walk into any Target store and pick them up. That's a 100% profit. The gift cards are whimsical and well designed many featuring their mascot. There is a brisk business for the gift cards featuring characters from the Marvel Comics series X-Men. Collaborating with Marvel comics shows that Target is aware of the potential for bringing in incurable collectors to their stores.
How much does Target spend on printing these cards? Does the expense justify the unintended consequence? It brings people into the store to pick up these cards but do they buy anything on the way out?
Related Stories: | Topics:Work/Life, culture, Target Corporation, Media, Books and Literature, Graphic Novels and Comics, eBay Inc. |
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Recent Comments | 6 Total
June 8, 2005 at 11:07am by Chris_Welter
Target should benefit from this market for their gift cards. Target receives a lot of very cheap(the cost of the cards) advertising. Not to mention that it brings people into the stores frequently which will cause these people to do their small, everyday shopping their.
June 8, 2005 at 11:14am by Jason Chaka
The people that are collecting these cards aren't everyday consumers, they are more than likely thrifty and educated. They know what they are going in to look for, if they don't find the GC's they want, they will walk out and leave. If Target was smart, they would put most of GC's in the middle of the store next to a clearance section. 'Clearance' and 'Sale' catches eyes of almost everyone, especially the thrifty. Someone that came into the store just to look for 'free' GC's might be tempted to buy if they are near a clearance section.
June 8, 2005 at 2:05pm by Sharon
The link in your story doesn't describe the kind of black market for cards with no value to which you refer, but rather a market for exchanging unwanted cards or reselling unwanted cards with a value. Unless I am missing something...
June 8, 2005 at 3:16pm by Huh
Apparently, you either completely missed the point of the story you linked to...or you have a source that you're not naming (Deep Card)
The story you linked to talks about people swapping and trading cards with value on them...Your post makes it sound like people are just walking into a Tar-jeh...grabbing a handful of cards...and selling them on Ebay.
June 25, 2005 at 5:48am by Sonny
You are a dumbass.
November 8, 2006 at 7:36am by Ketzra
Old topic, but what the heck... I'll respond anyways. You obviously missed the point of your article, as it refers to unused cards with money still on them, which is perfectly fine to sell.
However, I myself, collect Target GiftCards. And so does my wife. But we put money on the giftcards, then spend them and keep the card. We've been doing this for years and there's nothing wrong with that.
But you are right in you attempt to point out that people are swiping cards just to sell of on eBay. There are quite a few people who do exactly that. There are enough collectors out there, that there is a small demand for the cards. And not everyone feels right about snatching them from stores...