I think they are brilliant, it saves me the trouble of thinking what to get and you also avoid getting the same gift which the other person already has.
With a gift card the recipient can get what they want.
Steve Wozniak of Apple fame used to get sheets of $2 bills turned into pads with perforations so he could tear off the bills to use for transactions (or just spend a whole uncut sheet). Fun gag.
A bit off topic, but what’s her source for Eisenhower dollars? I discovered them by chance at a bank one day but haven’t been able to find them at another bank since, while $2 bills are in stock pretty regularly.
She is a money nerd and casual collector. Working as a teller in college, she was fascinated by unusual currency and bonds, etc. (As late as 1999 she would get old folks turning in WW2 era victory stamps/bond.)
Basically, when we go somewhere new, we look for bank branches or sometimes supermarkets that cater to old people and ask for weird coins. Depending on the bank, tellers sometimes end up carrying these in their drawers for weeks and are happy to unload them. Locally, they know her and sometimes save coins. You develop a sense for banks that are more productive for this -- a more modern bank have staff who don't know what nickels are! :)
Sometimes you get lucky. A few years ago, my wife and my son came back with about $200 of eisenhowers, including a few silver ones. They basically bought $1200 worth of coins for $200! Some kid/grandkid probably turned in grandmas stuff.
Yes. And the gifting party doesn't have to even bother pretending they care enough about said recipient to try and figure what that person would like / could like and don't know it yet.
I don't see how any of that is brilliant. Might as well write a check. Or just don't bother with a gift at all. It's what I do with most people I don't care enough about.
Clearly you are one of those people who takes gifting very seriously, some dont. Its brilliant because its the right product for people who want to give something but dont have time or dont feel comfortable asking probing questions about what the recipient likes.
Gift cards demonstrate a modicum of forethought/planning, albeit on the order of a Hallmark card. Cash says "this is what I found in my wallet on the drive here". Check falls somewhere in between, but with the added inconvenience of the recipient having to figure out how to deposit it.
Gift cards have the added benefit to the gifter that, upon being spent, the giftee has a chance to associate them with the purchased good or service. Cash and check, being added to an amorphous fungible pool, confer no such benefit for the gifter.
What I haven't figured out is where on these axes lies a printed-out QR code granting ownership of a Bitcoin wallet. Unfortunately Google tells me these actually exist: https://bitcoinpaperwallet.com/holiday-design/
Before cheap plastic gift cards existed, we used to just hand over cash and write in the card "get a nice book and let me know when you do" or something. So that's hopefully a little less tacky ;)
When I became old enough that more distant relatives didn't really know what to buy me, they'd send £5 and a request that I spend it on clothes, a book, a day out with friends or whatever.
Usually, they'd send a banknote in perfect condition, or a cheque if it was by post.
I'm now too old for these gifts, but my youngest sibling gets the same instructions, and a future-dated transfer to his bank account.
> I guess it depends on the culture, some dont like getting direct cash.
East Asian cultures tend to stick to the "red envelope of cash".
I'm curious how much businesses have had inroads into swaying cultures to believe that gifts and gift cards are more desirable than cash. Economists historically have talked about how gifts are frequently inefficient uses of money because there is value loss when it isn't the most desired item at the time.
My Mom wants gift cards for gift occasions. But she also sends out gift cards for birthdays or whatever. She doesn’t understand why my siblings and I think this is so funny. She sends us a $25 gift card for our birthday and we send her a $25 gift card from the same place for her birthday.
For reasons I don't entirely understand, a large number of people think that giving a gift card is "more polite" than checks or cash. Even though you are literally giving just a worse version of cash that can only be used in one store.
Not everything is for sale. Things can be freely given that you wouldn't, and in some cases are not allowed to, sell.
But even beyond that some gifts that could be bought are valuable to the recipient disproportionately to what it cost for the giver to purchase them, for a variety of reasons.
> But even beyond that some gifts that could be bought are valuable to the recipient disproportionately to what it cost for the giver to purchase them, for a variety of reasons.
My point is that those are the same reasons that recipients value gift cards more than the same cash amount (though to a lesser extent).
