The holiday hangover is just about over and now many people are taking inventory of the gifts they received.  Whether you received a gift card from an employee, a colleague or the family member who just wasn’t sure what to get you, there are a lot of new avenues for you to resell that gift card, should you think you won’t use it.

Experts believe that the average family has about $300 in unused gift cards laying around their house.  New California laws prohibit gift cards from big chains or a single store from losing value or expiring, but bank gift cards, such as those from Visa, MasterCard or AmericanExpress, can expire and do have fees that deplete their value over time.

In order to help consumers take advantage of gift cards they haven’t used or know they are not going to use, there are more than a dozen gift card resale sites that have popped up online.  You usually won’t make dollar for dollar back on your gift card, but $15 for a $25 card that would sit in your drawer unused, may be worth it for some people.  The more established sites to check out include: Plastic Jungle, Cardpool, GiftCards.com and GiftCardBin.

There is one site though, which is marketing themselves heavily on TV, that consumers should be weary of, according to the LATimes article.  CardWoo is owned by the same people that run Cash4Gold.  Cash4Gold has had a lot of complaints against them over the years and their new CardWoo operation sounds a little fishy as well, since they don’t guarantee particular payment but only say they will send you what the card is worth, after they receive it.

For more information and helpful tips, check out the full article at: http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-perfin-20110116,0,1052907.column