According to a recent report from TowerGroup, 27 percent of gift cards bought this year will not be used and $6.4 billion of the expected $88.4 billion in gift cards sold this year wil not be redeemed (about 7%). That is lower than the usual figure of ten percent thrown around for breakage. With 27 percent of gift cards not used (and a bunch more not fully used), clearly, gift cards with little value on them offer little motivation to be redeemed.