There IS a better way to redeem Discover Cashback

This is why I blog.  So I can be told I’m wrong from you readers.  So a couple of days ago, I wrote that the best options to redeem Discover cashback were the National car rental certificates or CASH.  On Twitter, in email, and in comments, people wrote, “How about Staples gift cards?”  Initially my first response was…. yeah but you can get those for usually 20% off on occasion and then you have to factor in the opportunity cost of NOT using your Ink, which then sort of dilutes the 20% gain down to maybe 12.5% if you value UR at 1.5c.  Anyway, there’s an even more simplistic answer that Chasing the Points (the grandfather of gift card selling) pointed me to – just sell them for 86% on the dollar.

What he means is that Discover now lets you redeem $20 Discover cash for $25 in Staples GC and they are ELECTRONIC and FAST.  So if you had $1,000 Discover cash, then you could convert it to $1,250 in Staples electronic gift cards.  You can then go out to http://www.giftcardwiki.com/giftcards/Staples to see the current rate.  You could sell them on Cardcash for 81% to the dollar.  Now if you’re a bulk seller on a certain exchange, they’ll let you sell Staples egc at 86%.

So if you sold the $1,250 to Cardcash and got 81% of it back, you’d now have $1,012.50.  To me, the $12.50 isn’t worth the extra step.  I think it’d take me about 30 minutes to type all those cards in, and I’d value my 30 minutes over $12.50.  Now at 86%, you’d have $1,075.  That would be worth my 30 minutes then.  So I stand corrected.  If you want to jump through this extra hoop and take the minimal risk, you’ll earn and extra $75 over taking it out as cash.