Gift Cards have been added to the Great Gift Wrap Up 2013 site

Gift cards have been added to the Caesars Total Rewards Great Gift Wrap Up website for the 2013 promotion.

The Shell gas cards are back. This year, $100 of gas goes for 30,000 reward points. Last year in the 2012 GGWU it was 35,000 points for $100 of gas.

If I recall all of the gas cards had a redemption rate of about 35,000 for $100 in 2012. Are the redemption rates lower across the board for 2013??

For 30,000 points you can also get $100 gift cards to AMC movies and Jiffy Lube for oil change services. Also 1-800-flowers.

You get the same value for Marshalls, Banana Republic, TJ Maxx, Old Navy and other retailers.

And Stabucks and Landry's have the same redemption rate.

And the same rate for Home Depot and Toys R Us.

Yeah I just saw this. It's 3000 points right now for a $10 gas card. So that's a small improvement over last year's 3500.

Anyway, that makes the value of each Gift Point $0.00333 (that is, one third of a cent) per point. So basically every 3 gift points is worth a penny.

Many people didn't realize that you could exchange gift points for free play. I am forgetting the exchange rate, and I think you had to buy the freeplay in $50 increments, but it was the best deal. Last year, I got an iPad, a single $10 Shell card, and got the rest (about $650) in freeplay.

Perhaps this year the gas cards will be worth more than the freeplay, thanks to the reduction in point price.

Here are some tips for the Great Gift Wrap Up:

- Avoid electronics, as many of them were priced months ago, and will be poor value by the time you get there. iPads are sometimes the exception, as their prices are fixed by Apple.

- Bring a smartphone or iPad with you to the event (or do all of your research beforehand) for the best online price (including shipping/tax) of each item. Then compare it to the number of points it costs, and figure out how much you're really getting per point. So, for example, if you want an item that is 90000 points, but you see it is going for $300 at the cheapest place online (tax & shipping included), that means you're only getting 0.296 cents per point. That's not a good deal when you can get 0.333 cents per point buying gas cards. So stay away from items like that.

- You can transfer points! Many don't realize this. Almost everyone ends up with some kind of "remainder" of points, and assume they just lose them! Not true! You can only do this in person, and both people need to be present. Just both go to the checkout area, and they can transfer any amount of points WITH NO PENALTY from one person to another.

I am really interested in this point about transferring points. No one said that to us last year or the year before -- my son and I always go together and we are always juggling items between our two accounts to max out our points. Of course the simpler way is just to transfer points.

Last year I did have an odd number of points which I used for a small amount of free play. My major purchase at the GGWU is always Shell gas cards for me plus everything that is on my wife's wish list. We buy a lot of gift cards for holiday gifts and usually silver charm bracelets from David Yurman that my wife likes to give as gifts to her nieces.

As we get closer, I would like to know what the exchange rate is for free play vs the gas cards.

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Originally Posted by Alan Mendelson

I am really interested in this point about transferring points. No one said that to us last year or the year before -- my son and I always go together and we are always juggling items between our two accounts to max out our points. Of course the simpler way is just to transfer points.

Last year I did have an odd number of points which I used for a small amount of free play. My major purchase at the GGWU is always Shell gas cards for me plus everything that is on my wife's wish list. We buy a lot of gift cards for holiday gifts and usually silver charm bracelets from David Yurman that my wife likes to give as gifts to her nieces.

As we get closer, I would like to know what the exchange rate is for free play vs the gas cards.

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Yeah I would also love to know the rate for the free play. If the gas cards are a better rate, I will definitely take that over the free play, though I do find gas cards to be a pain in the ass because you're forced to go to a particular station.

The transferring of points is a hidden benefit. I'm really surprised they allow it. Hopefully they won't do away with it in 2013. Almost nobody there knew that you could do it (I'm talking about customers, not employees). I went around and told as many people as I could. I hated seeing Caesar's just keep everyone's hard-earned excess points!

Like I said when my son and I went to the check out together, no one mentioned a thing about transferring and we were there swapping items to max out what we could get. (We took extra "gift redemption cards" to the check out to see how we could maximize the points with the smaller items.)