COLLECTING GIFT CARDS

Following up on Mike Costanzo's query on whether anyone out there collects gift cards. Yes, I most certainly do, and must have hundreds upon hundreds (if not thousands) in my collection at this point. When I used to work at Target part-time they would commonly throw away all of the empty gift cards after a holiday season had passed; a nice selection of these would come home with me. When I worked the registers I frequently kept many from the shopper once they were fully redeemed, otherwise they would also hit the trash. Target gift cards have been my favorite throughout the years simply because they had so many interesting and novel designs. There were some containing actual Legos, ones that you record a message on to playback, and one year they even issued a metal coin to serve as the gift card. Lately it seems that they have moved to a simpler format, since these 3-D type cards were probably expensive to produce, relatively speaking. When they were remodeling some point-of-sale advertising in the store I was able to obtain a large cut out display piece that looked like a generic Target gift card.

Sometimes Starbucks issued visually appealing gift cards for the holidays, and I was able to obtain those from the in-store location. I have many gift cards from defunct department stores and other retailers (i.e. Marshall Fields, Sears, etc.). When it was recently announced that many Red Lobster locations were about to close, I picked up a few of the empty gift cards from a kiosk at my local grocery store. McDonald's also frequently has some pretty nice designs, and they usually never mind letting me have one if I ask for an empty example. It just so happens that the other day I visited our local Boy Scout Headquarters store for a new Coin Collecting Merit Badge book. Surprisingly enough they had gift cards there, so I obtained an example of each in anticipation of the upcoming "Boy Scouts of America" name change.

Gift cards typically cost pennies to produce and are not considered an inventory item. I once worked for a business where I was put in charge of locating a company to produce gift cards for us. That was fun, because it allowed me to get a nice selection of samples in the mail from the manufacturer to review their work product, which then all subsequently went into my collection. We bought from them and I was able to get some proofs. So yes, gift cards are a fun and inexpensive subset of my numismatic interests, and thousands can be stored in a very compact space.

Often considered disposable contemporary items, once these gift cards are gone then they are often simply forgotten about. I am happy to preserve as many as I can while they are still available and build a collection out of them, but who knows what will happen to them or if there will be any interest decades down the line when it comes time for me to disperse the collection. Maybe one day I will be so inclined to build an exhibit around them, I seem to recall someone at a CSNS or ANA show years back having just such an exhibit under the exonumia category. Until then, like everyone else, I will just keep on collecting!

 

To view more images of gift cards, see:
Collecting Gift Cards (https://flic.kr/s/aHBqjBGuMe)

To read the earlier E-Sylum article, see:
NOTES FROM E-SYLUM READERS: SEPTEMBER 1, 2024 : Gift Card Collecting? (https://www.coinbooks.org/v27/esylum_v27n35a10.html)

 

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