Happy New Year’s Eve Eve!  Do you celebrate that like a real holiday?  I do not … but what the heck, I thought I would throw it in there.  So, have any of you heard of the Overwhelming Offers website?  Before today, I had not.  But somehow it showed up in my inbox, affiliated somehow with my Borders Rewards program (??), although it doesn’t appear to really have anything to DO with Borders.  I’m sorry, this sounds confusing.  Basically, a magical email showed up in my inbox telling me one of today’s Overwhelming Offers is 50% off a Sephora e-gift card.

Yes, you read that right.  50% off a Sephora e-gift card!

Naturally, there’s a catch.  The deal has to be “unlocked” by 120,000 people.  You “unlock” the deal by “checking in” on their site here.  You can sign in with Facebook OR give your email address to sign up, and then you click to “check in” to help unlock the deals.  Some of today’s other deals:

50% off a Sears e-gift card

50% off a Home Depot e-gift card

50% off a Barnes and Noble e-gift card

$25 off a $50 Kmart gift card

50% off an Omaha Steaks e-gift card

50% off at FTD

Wowsers!  Each deal has that catch – it has to be “unlocked” by anywhere from 50,000 – 200,000 people.  I have been watching the Sephora deal on and off all day, and it has currently been unlocked by just over 117,000 people.  Only 3,000 more to get that 50% off deal!  So – head on over to Overwhelming Offers and unlock some of these awesome deals.

It is my understanding that by unlocking the deal, you are not committing to buying the offer – just helping to get to the unlocked deal.

Happy shopping!

Update:  There is more of a catch to this than I originally thought!  After stalking this website all day, and staring at it for the past hour watching the numbers climb up to 120,000, I hit “reserve” the second it came up on my screen but was told it had already sold out!  Apparently, only 200 of these offers were available.  And 2oo people clicked “reserve” the same second I did!  And I lost.  Which I’m totally bummed about.  It appears that you can earn points that will give you a time advantage – i.e., being able to reserve the deal earlier than it is made available to everyone else.  I will continue to keep you updated as I learn more about this crazy site!