At our house, instead of keeping movies in their original DVD cases, we keep them in a DVD-Wallet so that they take up less space. I was about to throw out the case for a Ratatouille disc that we got recently but noticed the insert in the front cover for the Disney Movie Rewards Program. It promised 100 points if you go to their website and put in the ‘Magic Code’ on the certificate. You can accumulate rewards points for each movie that you buy, then redeem the points for posters, clothing, movies, and various other things.

I’m not the kind of person who usually bothers with collecting any type of reward points and redeeming them. In my experience, all of the prizes that I would qualify for are junk and you’d end up paying more in shipping than they are worth.

But that doesn’t mean that the rewards points don’t have a value for somebody else.

And if an item has a value to somebody, its likely for sale on eBay. Sure enough, a current search for ‘Disney Movie Rewards‘ yields about 100 active items and 400 completed items. I did a little research and found that the average selling price for 100 points was around $2-$3. Due to eBay policies (and for the seller’s protection against chargebacks), most listings include a 41 cent shipping fee to cover the price of a stamp so that the seller can send the actual certificate to the buyer in the mail.

I created a new listing for my 100 Ratatouille points. I listed it on a weekend morning with a Buy-It-Now price of $2.59 plus $0.41 shipping. It sold in under 4 hours, and the buyer paid right away. I stuck it in the mail, and made a quick couple bucks:

Here’s a breakdown of the expenses and how much I really made after the various fees:

If you have several of the rewards certificates available, it would obviously make more sense to sell them all together to minimize some of those fees. In any case, if you happen to have some Disney movies around, it would be worth your time to check to see if they have any rewards coupons in them, and sell them for some extra cash.

For those who are ambitious, you might be able to find some extra rewards points certificates at thrift stores, yard sales, and from friends. It may also be something to keep in mind when buying movies - remember that you can sell the points from most movies to essentially reduce the price of the movie by a couple dollars.