Often times, when a closed-loop gift card received from another person is a pain.  It might not be for something you use very frequently, and thus not very useful.  Unless the giver really nails it by giving you a gift card to an establishment that you frequent, the gift cards can sit around for a long time before being used, if ever.

Of course, you can sell it for less than face value at any one of the many gift card buyback or trading websites, or sell it on Ebay.

On the other hand, I like the idea of buying gift cards for myself for businesses that I DO frequent if I can get them at a discount, such as from one of the gift card resale businesses.

So it is with great interest that I recently found quite a few discounted gift cards at Costco.  In this sense, they are really discount cards, as I am not gifting them to anyone but buying them for myself.  On average, the restaurant gift cards Costco offers are at a 20% discount.  Not a bad deal.