The one area where gift cards are nice is when you for sure know that someone is going to be shopping somewhere and will use it up. My husband and I recently gained two nephews through his brother’s fiancee’s previous marriage. There’s a local game store that the boys love, so we got them gift cards paired with an outing to the store and lunch. My brother-in-law and his fiancee just had a baby, our niece, so it’s also a way to give them a little bit of a break. It wouldn’t have been existing for them if it had just been cash.