(Image source: ABC News)

BY NATHAN GIANNINI

ANCHOR LAUREN ZIMA

A National Retail Federation survey found gift cards were the No. 1 item on holiday wish lists for the fifth straight year, pulling in an estimated $27.8 billion. 

The survey found 80 percent of shoppers planned to purchase a gift card this holiday season -- but that between six and ten percent will go unused, adding up to a whopping $41 billion in unused funds since 2005.

So -- if that thirty dollars to Red Lobster wasn’t on your letter to Santa -- what can you do with it? Here’s Gothamist with some ideas.

“...if you know you won’t use that gift card to Build-A-Bear, you can sell it at Plastic Jungle, or one of the other sites that will pay around 80% or more of the card’s value. If you enjoy wringing the slightest amount of happiness out of every transaction in your life, you can also invest in a mutual fund with a gift card on GoalMine.com, where they accept increments as small as $25.”

Now, all these unused cards must be a goldmine for retailers, right? Well, maybe not so much. The Wall Street Journal reports -- the SEC only allows companies to count unused cards as income once they can reasonably claim the funds will never be redeemed, which can be two years or more. Even then, some states don’t allow it at all.

“They demand that companies give the money to the state after a certain period of time to add to unclaimed-funds accounts. States claim this is a way to reunite consumers with their unspent money, but practically it’s a way for cash-strapped governments to give themselves more liquid funds.”

The Journal notes -- for example -- in 2008, the state of New York collected almost ten million dollars in unredeemed cards, but only reunited owners with a little over two thousand. So if you want to get full value for your gift, KCBS has some advice:

“If you received a gift card for the holiday season, consumer experts say get out and use it now. Researchers say you may be charged inactivity fees if have you the bank-issued gift card. You could be charged a monthly fee after 12 months of inactivity. Also the retailer could go bankrupt. Even if the retailer continues to honor its gift cards there could be fewer places to redeem them or less time to do it.”