{"id":9301,"date":"2024-03-02T04:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-03-02T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/?p=9301"},"modified":"2024-03-01T23:04:56","modified_gmt":"2024-03-02T06:04:56","slug":"historical-unicorns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/2024\/03\/02\/historical-unicorns\/","title":{"rendered":"Historical Unicorns"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><em>EDITORS NOTE: In 2024, I\u2019ve introduced Guest Post Saturdays. I&#8217;m still looking for more guest posts, please reach out if you have something interesting to share with the community!<\/em>\u00a0<em>Today\u2019s guest post is from a strong community contributor, and the official churning historian, Hank.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Confucius&#8217;s churning manual says that if you want to know the future then study the past. With that in mind it&#8217;s time to get out the popcorn and enjoy some unicorns from 10+ years ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><strong>Funding Citi checking accounts for $100k\/pop on 4% everywhere cash back card.<\/strong>&nbsp; No elaborate shenanigans.&nbsp; Build a $100k CL on the Barclays Travelocity MasterCard (MEAB Unsung Hero card 2009 &#8211; 2015), fund account, repeat.<br><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Venmo no fee $3k\/month unlimited accounts.<\/strong> For it&#8217;s first several years Venmo allowed up to $3k\/month of fee free credit spend <em>per account<\/em>. An account was an email address, a phone number (google voice), and a unique credit card (employee card).<br><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>20+ BOA cards in one sitting.<\/strong> While nowadays BOA has credit line rules in place to throttle velocity historically a good &#8220;App-o-Rama&#8221; could net 20 cards in a sitting. The downside: highest cashback bonus was $200. Upside: easy to combine credit lines for other shenanigans.<br><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Buy GC sell same platform 3% profit.<\/strong>&nbsp;Gift card reselling websites didn&#8217;t used to have strong guardrails. You could buy (for example) Target gift cards, stack rebates, and sell the same gc back for a profit. Repeat, scale.<br><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Gold bullion by the pound.<\/strong> While the better known play was dollar coins from the US mint the back saving move was gold coins on Ebay. By stacking a series of rebates you could earn 2-5% spread + points. Limits were float (things haven&#8217;t changed) and your comfort levels with constantly driving 6 figures of bullion to the post office in a beat up old ford.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>While the specific plays above are long gone there are variations of each circling around to this day. <em>EDITOR&#8217;S NOTE: Always be probing<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8211; Hank<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image is-style-editorskit-rounded\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"678\" height=\"539\" src=\"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/image-18.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-9302\" style=\"width:420px\" srcset=\"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/image-18.png 678w, https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/image-18-300x238.png 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 678px) 100vw, 678px\" \/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center\" style=\"font-size:14px\">Scrooge McDuck explaining to a police officer why thousands of dollars of dollar coins are spilling out of his trunk after a traffic accident.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>EDITORS NOTE: In 2024, I\u2019ve introduced Guest Post Saturdays. I&#8217;m still looking for more guest posts, please reach out if you have something interesting to<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_editorskit_title_hidden":false,"_editorskit_reading_time":0,"_editorskit_is_block_options_detached":false,"_editorskit_block_options_position":"{}","footnotes":""},"categories":[178,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9301","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-guest","category-unicorn"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9301","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9301"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9301\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9306,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9301\/revisions\/9306"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9301"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9301"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9301"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}