Typically, I find out the hard way. To my surprise, eBay gift cards cannot be used to purchase coins. “Only redeemable for select items listed on eBay...” is what the back of the card says. The finer print is on the website. Dang it. I switched to this gift card (my bad, no prior research done) because the Vanilla Visa/MasterCard ones always end up with 30 cents or more and you can’t combine the mini balances of many into one. I’m sure this is common knowledge among the experienced. I think the condition on purchases is crappy. As you can imagine, I was displeased but I found the silver in the lining out of this. Forcing myself to find something other than coin to buy... USB Microscope! Okay, that’s cool. Finally, I’ll have one in a few days and I can put to rest the nagging that my MAD ‘93 Lincoln CAM Greaser, is actually a ‘92! Now, if only a metal detector would fall out of the sky for me, I’d be set, lol Do you like my marbles? Photographing them without reflection is tough!
Very cool. They're so.. round! I had no idea on the gift card thing. Can't figure out the logic in that. There's a few exceptions to things I've noticed, like no eBay bucks on bullion. Just have to find bullion in the non-bullion category. Ive bought it listed under "errors" before.
@Devyn5150 I never have change left over on a gift card because I always buy something that is more than the amount on the gift card. Chris
I was incensed when eBay made that change. I'd been doing very nicely buying eBay gift cards at Kroger during gas-discount promotions -- given the size of our tank, it worked out to an 8% rebate on the gift card's value. But if I couldn't spend them in Coins and Paper Money, they were essentially useless to me. I eventually bought a piece of test equipment that used up my remaining balance. Now, I buy Amazon gift cards. I can get nearly any non-coin item I need on Amazon, and it's easier to find, it's usually cheaper, and Prime shipping is easier and more reliable. (I do still try to buy local first.)
I thought it might be because the category has lower fees for people with eBay Stores, but there were other categories with even lower fees that weren't excluded (I'm thinking it was one of the Computer or Electronics categories). The best I can figure is that they expect someone to basically do it as a money-laundering scheme, where they're using gift cards to buy money at face value. Because of course anyone trying to run such a scheme would be careful to list their money accurately and in the right category, and would be happy to give eBay a big cut off the top. I think I figured out at some point that if I: 1. Opened an eBay store 2. Listed something random in the lowest-fee category I could find 3. Bought it myself, using a separate account, and paying via gift cards that earned the fuel-point promotion ...I could just come out a few dollars ahead per month -- if I went through enough gas. This actually got me curious enough to go look at fees. It looks like they've actually put in discounted fees for the Starter store level in a couple of categories, 3.5% for Guitars and Basses and 2% for a couple of Industrial categories. So, if I signed up for a year of a Starter store at $4.95/month, bought $500 worth of gift cards during a promotion (earning $1.00/gallon discount for two fillups), managed to buy 20 gallons of gas at each fillup, and sold myself a $500 food trailer each month, I'd come out ahead: -$500 cost of cards -$4.95 subscription cost -$10.00 FVF +$500 PayPal payment to myself -$14.50 PayPal fee +$40.00 total gas savings ...by about $10.55. The numbers improve a bit if I can go through more gas per month, especially if I can get a bigger tank (or some 5-gallon gas cans). If I could hit the 35-gallon-per-fillup limit, I'd be up by $40.55 per month. But the 4x fuel point promotions are a bit unpredictable, and don't come around every month, so some months I'd be stuck for the store subscription cost with no profit at all. For me, though, that's way too much effort just to stick it to eBay.
They aren’t coins or notes but they are just as artistic and collectable. It is curious how the cataloguing and management of the family’s collection of mostly Canadian Silver opened the floodgate to my own “manic” collecting. These other items, marbles, pins, bottle caps, postcards etcetera, ain’t near to the degree in desire that a proof coin is but, they could easily be on their way.
