Studying the holiday phenomenon of re-gifting.

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Deacon’s re-gifting exploits began three years ago, when he realized he had a collection of unwanted items given to him for his birthday. He re-gifted all of them—and discovered it takes a little extra something to complete the task.

“I ain’t gonna lie,” Deacon says, “it comes down to if you’ve got balls or not.”

That courage, he says, is necessary to confront the dangers of being caught and branded a re-gifter. Permanently.

“My whole game would be ruined if my family and other people found out,” he acknowledges. “But I guess they can’t get too mad—how can you get mad at someone who just gave you a gift?” After taking a moment to consider the repercussions of his going on the public record, Deacon requested that a series of pseudonyms be used to help throw his family members off his trail.

Deacon-Ramirez says his biggest re-gift coup happened recently. “I can’t believe this,” he says, “I just got away with giving a semi-used gas card away to my friend for his birthday.”

But a half-used gas card isn’t the only unconventional item being re-gifted these days. The eBay survey found that the most popular re-gifts are “knick-knacks,” household appliances, and exercise videos.

Although most items being re-gifted are not edible, a startling amount of people who took the survey—a full 31 percent—admitted to re-gifting a fruitcake.

But Americans feel some gifts are too sacred for the underground art of re-gifting. Handmade gifts, gift cards, and tickets for various events were least likely to be re-gifted.

Interestingly, the survey also found that more women (59 percent) re-gifted than men (45 percent).

And while the idea of re-gifting may seem immoral to some, the most common motive for doing does offer some perspective: 84 percent of respondents cited financial limits as the main reason for their re-gifting. But one serial re-gifter has a different take on his own motivations.

“I do it for the rush,” Deacon-Matsui claims. “Most people wouldn’t dare re-gift an item that they were disgusted by, but I enjoy the challenge of passing it off to another person.”

In another intriguing development, the Internet has already helped foster the next advance in re-gifting. Just last year a man by the name of William Dodd officially obtained a patent for new re-gifting technology. The idea is that anyone can re-gift an item before they even receive it—a person is sent an e-mail informing them that their friend bought them a velvet scarf, and before that scarf is even shipped, they can sell it online.

And eBay itself could even provides re-gifters with an opportunity to make money off of a gift with which they were displeased, with the new option of anonymity. But there is one hitch in that plan (besides bad karma).

“I’ve thought about putting [the gifts] on eBay,” Deacon-Fitzgerald explains, “but who would buy this stuff?”