Gift, Interrupted

I love receiving gift cards, but it seems like the ones I get tend to be for stores where I don't find much I like these days. It's a terrible feeling to go into a store with a gift card to spend, look around for 20 minutes (making a second circuit to make sure you didn't miss anything), and not find a single thing you want to get.

I received a Banana Republic gift card from my brother, but I haven't bought anything from BR in probably a year or more. This is pretty much my fault, because he asks my mother what to get me, and my mother thinks I still like to shop there because I have not told her otherwise. Clearly I will need to do that before Christmas rolls around.

I saw a couple of things I did like, but I felt they were overpriced by at least 25%. I saw a couple of other things that I could have gotten but don't need, and I can't see the point of getting something that's just going to hang in the closet and get dusty. I could wait a couple months for some different merchandise to rotate in, but I'm not known for being a terribly patient person in general, and with gift cards, the thing might as well be leaking plutonium. (It's sad, I know.)

I know about the various sites where you can sell and trade gift cards, but they typically charge a fee, and you typically have to sell the card for at least 10% off its face value to get anyone to buy.

So I'm going to try a different approach. At work we have an intranet, and on it there is a craigslist-type bulletin board. Today I posted under Barter looking for someone who wants to swap gift cards, and we'll see if anyone is interested.