About those XBOX gift cards

I remember “back in the day,” I used to resell XBOX Live $100 gift cards for about 83% net on Raise. That seems to be the going rate these days as well. I was doing that because I didn’t have an XBOX and so I couldn’t use the gift cards myself.

Fast forward to 2020 and apparently some time ago, Microsoft made a change to where the XBOX gift cards are redeemed to your Microsoft account, thus enabling you to buy actual Microsoft products, specifically the new XBOX Series S and X devices. I believe you can also buy Microsoft software as well. This isn’t a hugely scalable play, but I’ve been able to buy a series X and an S lately using gift card balance funds, thus earning more than 100% on the gift cards.

The other reason I bring this up is because I was debating how to redeem my monthly Gamestop $5 rewards. I was using them on Nintendo, but it seems you can only have a $200 balance max before they stop letting you add more gift cards to your balance. Plus, it’s better to buy physical games that you can resell later anyway.

So now I’m redeeming all my Gamestop $5 credits to XBOX gift cards. I think the systems will be in short supply at least through summer. Once the systems won’t be a resell opp anymore, I’m sure they’ll come out with something else that I can redeem for at least 100% full value.