Tonight I decided to do an experiment.  I recently joined Listia.com and noticed an interesting trend.  People are listing iTunes, Visa, etc, etc gift cards.  What this amount to is that they are actually buying (knowingly or not) Listia Credits.

In an effort to cut down the silly gift card business out of the equation I have created a listing that openly offer to BUY Listia Credits based on a flexible “Listia Credits to $” table.  You can see the details at http://www.listia.com/auction/113282.

There is chance that Listia will cancel my auction… but really I don’t think I am breaching any site rules here.  I am offering to BUY Credits and guess what… it mean sending money to the “bidder” in return via Paypal. It is perfectly legal.

The only reason I could see them terminate the listing is because they might want to prevent people to openly buy credits for less than they sell them. Listia is currently selling 1 credit for 0.1$.  I am offering around 0.016$ per credit.  A lot less but in line with what credits are trading today on Listia.

If successful, my next challenge will be to devise a way to sell Listia Credits I bought.  This will likely prove harder but I have a few ideas.  Could this be the beginning of a Listia Credit Exchange Market?  Maybe.

UPDATE

Look like Listia want the monopoly of selling Credits.  They killed both my listings for buying Listia credits on the basis that they where confusing.  Right! The only thing confusing is why Listia won’t let it’s users buy credits by offering money to other users in exchange.  They are OK with people selling silly Gift Cards.  This is essentially the same but with a piece of plastic instead of an electronic money transfer.