February 4, 2011 Getting a good deal is top priority at Plastic Jungle, both for us and, of course, for our customers. When we find something good, we have to pass it on!

Every Friday we share our sweepstakes and gift card giveaway finds with you. There are many more giveaways posted in earlier Friday Giveaways listings still open to enter: just go to the Give Card Giveaways category in the right-hand menu and check out posts from 2011 – there are many sweepstakes and giveaways that are still open.

Our latest sweep of online sweepstakes and gift card giveaways is definitely relevant for the romantic and wintry month of February. Let’s get to it:

Victoria’s Secret Love Me, Make Me, Send Me is a giveaway with a chance to win a $250 Victoria’s Secret Gift Card or a romantic getaway to Napa Valley. It’s a fun way to enter a sweepstakes: create and send a Victoria’s Secret Valentine’s Day eCard. After you send the Victoria’s Secret eCard, you will have the opportunity to enter the sweepstakes. No purchase necessary; contest ends 2/14/11; check Victoria’s Secret’s Love Me, Make Me, Send Me official rules for details.

Photo taken with a GoPro Camera

GoPro: One Person Wins Everything We Make. Daily. Sweepstakes If you’re into filming crazy stuff, say extreme sports, extreme kids, or you’re just looking for an amazing camera that can mount just about anywhere (surf board? helmet? car hood?), check out GoPro’s hot Hero camera. This is next-gen video recording at its affordable best – and you can win it. Ends 1/18/12; check out official rules for details.

>>>Get a GoPro camera at Best Buy (get a discount with a Best Buy Gift Card from Plastic Jungle)

>>>Get a GoPro camera at Amazon.com (trade in an unused gift card and get an Amazon.com Gift Card).

100 Sunny Days Facebook Contest: Win A Prize A Day Giveaway SunnyD really will stand for “Sunny Day” if you win one of their daily drawings. This is a giveaway you can enter to win a prize a day (for 100 days, starting on January 29, 2011), on Facebook or outside of Facebook. You’ll need a code which you get on SunnyD products, or to receive a free code, go to the site and click “Need a code? Click here.” and follow the directions to enter. Prizes include: iPods+iTunes Gift Cards, flat screen TVs, YMCA memberships, Nintendo Wii gaming consoles, $10,000 CASH! Wow. Contest ends May 7, 2011; check official rules (see link on the page) for details.

>>>Get SunnyD at Target or Walmart with discounted gift cards from Plastic Jungle.

If you’re looking forward to a proposal on Valentine’s Day, it works in your favor that February is National Wedding Month (according to the National Association of Bridal Consultants). Honeymoon and Romantic Getaways Blogger Susan Breslow Sardone (Honeymoons.About.com) shares information on the hottest honeymoon destinations and the most amazing Getaway Giveaways with four pages of contests you can enter to win and more. It might be a surer way to get to your honeymoon destination by biting the bullet and buying a ticket: you can get discounted American Airlines gift cards and  discounted JetBlue gift cards. Right now on Plastic Jungle is a (ONE!) discounted Four Seasons Resort Gift Card available at 10% off face value. Act fast to snap it up.

Skimp.org’s page of Giveaways has tons of gift card giveaways and gift card sweepstakes for you to enter by following them on Twitter and retweeting the prize you want. Right now in separate giveaways, win a Walmart Gift Card, a Best Buy Gift Card, a Target Gift Card, Cheesecake Factory Gift Card and much more, including iPod Shuffles, iPads and an iPhone 4! You win when they get to their desired number of Tweets for the prize – the more you enter, the faster they get to giving away the prizes. Fun idea, plus Skimp.org collects and posts tons of hot coupons for everything from CafePress to Coach, so for deal lovers like us, it’s a good pit-stop before any online shopping venture.

If you’ve got a gift card and you need to check the balance, you can easily look up our “How to Check Balance” posts — just click on the category in our blog listing (on the right-hand side of the site page). Usually, you can find gift card balances by calling the number on the back of the card, or going to the merchant’s website and searching “Gift Card”.

Have you won anything yet? Definitely let us know what you win – and feel free to comment below on which sweepstakes and giveaways are your favorites.

Just a few more days and we’re into February, month of the NFL’s Super Bowl LXV (February 6^th), Valentine’s Day (February 14^th), and the glam event of the year, The Oscars (February 27). Are you armed with the discounted gift cards that will keep it all affordable for you?

Discounted Gift Cards Available Now* on Plastic Jungle:

Victoria’s Secret Gift Cards – on sale up to 10% off face value

1-800-Flowers.com Gift Cards – on sale up to 30 % off face value

AMC Theatres Gift Cards – on sale up to 16% off face value

Bath & Body Works Gift Cards – on sale up to 13% off face value

bebe Gift Cards – on sale up to 10 % off face value

Ruth’s Chris Steak House Gift Cards – on sale up to 14% off face value

Sports Authority Gift Cards – on sale up to 14% off face value

iTunes Gift Cards – on sale up to 9% off face value

That’s a pretty good list, plus check out the huge list of discounted gift cards available now on Plastic Jungle. Act fast and buy right away: supplies are limited and don’t forget allow time for shipping a standard gift card. Plastic Jungle never charges for shipping. As well, eCODEs (eGift Cards) are emailed immediately (although can take up to 24 hours), without service or handling fees.

Let us know what your Valentine’s Day will include… a romantic dinner? a girls’ night out? the exchange of sporting goods? (A woman once told me that she and her fiancé exchanged skiis for Valentine’s Day; she was giddy with excitement with the news!) If you’ve got a great idea, we’ll post it here, and we’ll discuss ways you can save on the Valentine’s Day idea.

When none of that works out and you need an Oscar party date, think about Mattel’s Sweet Talking Ken. He’ll say what you want to hear, and if you trade in an old unused gift card, you could buy him with the Amazon.com Gift Card you could get. The perfect date!

*Discounts and gift card availability may vary.

Perhaps you’ve read the articles: more and more people aren’t bothering to re-gift or even tuck their unwanted gift cards into their wallet this year. They are selling or exchanging them for cash or credits as soon as possible. Why? It’s a good cure for a holiday shopping hangover.

With all the focus on consumer spending this last holiday season, everyone from local TV news (KTRK-TV an ABC affiliate in Houston, TX) to savvy Internet news sites (CNNMoney.com) is reporting on the gift card trend. With so many cards flying around, it could mean that even when people are given a gift card to a store they love, it may very well be that they can’t use it. Let me tell you why:

1)      Fund allocation. Times are tight, and while a $50 gift card for iTunes is much appreciated, the exchange value (especially here on Plastic Jungle) is worth so much more in calm nerves and a paid PG&E bill.

2)      Time allocation. Macaroni Grill might be your family’s favorite restaurant, but getting everyone together to enjoy it is like herding cats. By turning in the card and purchasing a discounted card to the local grocery store, everyone gets the dinner they want at 5 pm, 7 pm and 9 pm, or as they run in and out of the kitchen.

3)      Suffering from Holiday Shopping Hangover. They just purchased the items they were dying to get or couldn’t possibly think of heading to the mall for another four months. Um, yes, it’s true: we tend to shop for ourselves during the holidays. Maybe the necklace they wanted at Macy’s was on fire sale and they couldn’t resist; maybe it was very convenient to get the Kenmore appliance at Sears last month; the Sony laptop and all accessories were begging for purchase at Best Buy while they were at the store picking up Best Buy Gift Cards for all their neighbors. Suddenly, the $100 Macy’s Gift Card looks like it might not see the light of day until another dress situation comes up, and it would be better just to cash it in, load their PayPal account, and pay a bill.

So if you’re on the Plastic Jungle site and wondering, “Who would give up that credit at Victoria’s Secret – especially NOW when they’re having a huge SALE?” (and yes, the sale goes through 11:59 pm EST on January 23, 2011).

Here on Plastic Jungle you can rest assured that your gift card purchase is always safe, and there will be no gift card maintenance fees or expirations dates to worry about.  Further, when you sell or exchange gift cards on Plastic Jungle, it’s a guaranteed transaction with no fees or even shipping to pay.

So pick up that Victoria’s Secret gift card: go ahead and calculate the added savings on top of the up-to-50% off you’ll get at Victoria’s Secret. [At time of writing, Plastic Jungle has a fat selection Victoria’s Secret Gift Cards and eCODES (electronic gift cards) on sale at a 10% discount off face value. When you combine a discounted gift card + Victoria’s Secret sale savings, you could save up to 60% on merchandise today.]

What’s your reason for selling or exchanging your gift cards? We’d love to hear your story.